The government is not considering lockdown right now but has directed the health department to intensify awareness campaigns and ensure strict enforcement of health safety rules amid a rise in Covid-19 transmission.
Health officials will have to work to ensure physical distancing and reopen Covid-dedicated hospitals or units and isolation centres that were shut down earlier.
They will also make sure that these hospitals across the country are provided with necessary logistics, including personal protective gears, oxygen supply and medicines.
Besides, screening at all entry points to the country airports, seaports and land ports will be strengthened immediately. If any traveller is diagnosed with Covid, he or she will be put on quarantine.
Along with her son Rezaur Rahman and his wife Farhana Hossain, 84-year-old Rizia Khatun, an osteoporosis patient, went to the capital s Mugda Medical College Hospital to take the Covid-19 vaccine yesterday.
Reaching there around 10:00am, from their home in Narinda, they did not find any attendant or wheelchair on their way to their destination the second floor of the hospital. They also could not find any elevator.
Holding hands of her son and daughter-in-law, Rizia then had to take the trouble of climbing the stairs to make it to the vaccination booth.
Many other elderly people, who went to the hospital for the shots, suffered the same way. Talking to The Daily Star, they complained of mismanagement at the public hospital s inoculation management.
The government has almost completed the groundwork for rolling out Covid-19 vaccine in the country early next month.
It gears up for the mass inoculation campaign as the first consignment of 50 lakh doses, purchased from Serum Institute of India (SII), arrived in Dhaka yesterday.
Officials said five public hospitals in the capital were all set to pilot the vaccination. They also said the hospital authorities had already trained 124 healthcare professionals and prepared designated places, where the shots would be administered. The prime minister will inaugurate the piloting at Kurmitola General Hospital on January 27 [tomorrow] at 3:30pm, Prof Nasima Sultana, additional director general of DGHS, told The Daily Star yesterday.