[The government is lifting a lockdown despite warnings
from health experts that the outbreak could worsen.]
By Saif Hasnat and Karan Deep Singh
“Ammu, you will be fine,” her
16-year-old daughter, Tajrin Jahan Yousha, tried to tell her, using an
affectionate term for “mother.” “We are close to the hospital. They will take
care of you.”
Bangladesh’s already strained
health care system is buckling under the ferocity of the country’s third, and
by far deadliest, wave
of coronavirus infections. About 60 percent of its 23,000
virus-related deaths and more than half of its total infections have
been recorded since the beginning of April. Its hospitals have been overrun.
Only 4 percent of
the population has been fully vaccinated.
And yet, on Wednesday, Bangladesh,
a country of 165 million people, lifted much of its lockdown. Banks, shops and
malls were allowed to reopen. Buses and trains will resume operating
at half capacity. They follow the garment industry, a
mainstay of the economy, which reopened two weeks ago.
Health experts fear that lifting
restrictions will only worsen the outbreak.
“If we reopen everything despite
the infection on the rise, we will suffer more terrible consequences,” said
Benazir Ahmed, an epidemiologist and a member of the government’s advisory
group on vaccines.
Bangladesh has keenly felt the pain
of shutting down its economy. Despite the country’s great strides in lifting hundreds of thousands of
people out of poverty, at least 24.5 million people have been pushed into it by
the pandemic, according to an April study.
Government advisers have said that
the country’s leaders have no choice but to reopen. “It’s not possible for the
government to keep the country locked down forever,” Mohammad Shahidullah,
president of the government’s Covid-19 committee, told the local news media on Wednesday.
Health experts say that by
reopening the country after less than three weeks, officials are effectively
shifting responsibility to individuals. The government ignored their advice
last month, they say, when it eased an earlier lockdown for the Islamic holiday
of Eid al-Adha, leading to superspreader events that caused a surge in
infections. Millions of people packed into buses, cattle
markets and shopping malls and gathered for prayers and festivities.
“The infection rate was high when
the ease was announced defying experts’ warning, and we are seeing the result
now,” Dr. Ahmed said.
The government of Prime Minister
Sheikh Hasina has said that hospitals in the country are overrun amid “a dire
need of intensive care.” Officials are renting hotels and creating makeshift
hospitals to treat patients.
“We cannot increase the number of
beds in our hospitals anymore,” Zahid Maleque, the health minister, said on
Saturday. “The citizens now have to do their part to bring down the infection
rate of Covid-19.”
In the capital, Dhaka, one of the
world’s most densely populated cities, ambulances sound their sirens as they
ferry patients searching for beds, oxygen and intensive care. Some hospitals
have put up signs saying, “We are sorry. No beds are available.”
Kakoly Akhter, six months pregnant
with her fourth child, arrived in Dhaka late last month seeking treatment for
Covid-19 after the hospital in her hometown 65 miles away ran out of oxygen.
Two days later, Ms. Akhter managed to get a bed at Dhaka Medical College
Hospital, one of the city’s biggest Covid hospitals. Mother and baby died a few
hours later.
“Had we gotten an intensive care
bed early, we would not have lost her only at 34,” said Delwar Hossain, Ms.
Akhter’s nephew. “She left three children behind. How will they grow up without
their mother?”
In the country’s remote villages,
where almost two-thirds of the population lives, doctors are scarcer and the
health infrastructure is already overburdened. Bangladesh has fewer than one
physician per 1,000 people, according to the World Bank, or less than one-quarter of the level of the
United States or Britain.
Last month, Jannatul Ferdous Any, a
woman in her early 30s, fell ill in the city of Sirajganj. At first, she just
had a fever. Then she couldn’t breathe.
Her brother, Saiful Islam, took her
to Sirajganj General Hospital on July 4. Three days later, the hospital ran out
of oxygen for her, he said.
A hospital 20 miles away agreed to
admit her and provide oxygen, but she could not get a bed in the intensive care
unit.
A week later, Ms. Any’s condition
worsened in the middle of the night. She began gasping for air. Mr. Islam said
the last thing she told him was to look after their parents.
“This coronavirus has taken her
away from us forever,” he said. “She was the only daughter of our parents and
our only sister.”
The third wave has taken a toll on
doctors and health care workers as well. At least 180 doctors have died since
April 2020, the Bangladesh Medical Association has said. More than 3,000
doctors and 6,000 health care workers, including nurses, have tested positive
for the virus as of Monday, it said.
Nazmul Haque, the director of Dhaka
Medical College Hospital, said his biggest challenge was a shortage of personnel.
“Many of our doctors, nurses and
other workers have tested positive for Covid-19,” he said. “Some of our staff
have died as well. It was enough to break the morale of many.”
Dr. Shamema Akter, a doctor working
in the hospital’s I.C.U., said she knew it was just a matter of time before a
third wave would hit Bangladesh. Across the border in India, where the more
infectious Delta variant of the virus was first detected, the
second wave overwhelmed hospitals in the spring. Bangladesh’s health
ministry has said that the Delta
variant is responsible for more than 60 percent of the new cases.
“According to that, we have
prepared ourselves to work for long hours,” Dr. Akter said. But sometimes they
get so exhausted, she said, that they have “mental breakdowns.”
Last week, when Ms. Jahan
desperately needed a hospital bed, the doctors at Dhaka Medical College
Hospital advised her to get a scan of her lungs. After examining the scan, a
doctor told Tajrin, Ms. Jahan’s daughter, that one of her mother’s lungs had
been severely infected but the hospital had no place for her.
Tajrin said that she wished doctors
had examined her mother more closely but that she didn’t blame them for the bed
shortage. “We don’t want to hold anyone responsible,” she said. “It was our
fate.”
Dr. Haque, the director of the
hospital, declined to comment.
Inside the ambulance, Tajrin talked
to her mother to keep her from losing consciousness. Ms. Jahan told her
daughter to “forgive” her and to take care of her older twin sisters, who have
mental and physical disabilities.
“You have big responsibilities,”
she told her daughter. “Live along with each other.”
Minutes later, she could hear her
mother’s breathing slowing. Tajrin started reciting what she could remember
from the Quran until they reached the second hospital.
The staff there took Ms. Jahan to
the triage room. Within 10 minutes, they told Tajrin that her mother had died.
“I never slept alone. I never slept
without my mother,” Tajrin said. Her aunts and uncles will look after her and
her siblings, she said, but they will always feel Ms. Jahan’s absence.
“No one can take the place of a
mother.”
Saif Hasnat reported from
Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Karan Deep Singh from New Delhi. Fabeha Monir
contributed reporting.
