A total of 400 new Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds will be added to country’s government hospital to tackle coronavirus situation, said Health Minister Zahid Maleque on Saturday.
“Already, there’re 200 ICU beds in the country’s government hospital. Besides, the work on setting up of 100 more such beds is underway while a process is on to bring necessary equipment to set up 300 more ICU beds,” he said.
The minister came up with the remarks at a press conference at the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) on the country’s coronavirus situation.
He said a devolved country like Italy has only around 650 ICU beds. “People will get benefited immensely if we can increase our ICU beds to 600. “
Zahid Maleque said China will remain beside Bangladesh and help overcome the coronavirus situation.
At the briefing, he confirmed the second death from coronavirus.
“The total death from the coronavirus infection in the country is now two. Four new patients have been diagnosed with the disease,” the minister said.
The deceased, aged around 73, had comorbidity, he said.
The minister said 50 people are in institutional quarantine and around 14,000 are home-quarantined across the country,” he said.
Bangladesh reported the country’s first death from coronavirus on March 18.
On March 8, the IEDCR announced for the first time the detection of three Covid-19 patients in Bangladesh.
The coronavirus pandemic has claimed the lives of 11,398 people worldwide as of Saturday. It has so far infected 275,871 people around the world, according to worldometer.
Of them, 172,561 are currently being treated with 7,765 being in serious or critical condition. So far, 103,310 cases had outcomes and of them, 91,912 (89 percent) recovered and 11 percent died. The World Health Organization on March 11 declared the coronavirus crisis a pandemic.UNB
