Covid-19: 82% of deceased last week not vaccinated

More than 82% of the deceased in Covid-19 last week did not take any vaccine, the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) said after analysing the data of the period.

The DGHS said 80 people died of the virus last week, of whom, eight received one dose, six took two doses, 66 did not take any vaccine and no information was found about 19.

The data also says 41.1% of them were suffering from diabetes, 36.3% from hypertension, 11.3% from heart disease and 1.3% from cancer.

Noted Virologist and a Member of the National Technical Advisory Committee on Covid-19 Professor Nazrul Islam told The Business Standard that vaccines reduce the death rates even if they cannot prevent infections. Therefore, priority should be given to vaccinating the elderly and comorbid patients.

"At present, the number of infections has decreased. If more people can be vaccinated soon, the deaths will decrease even if the number of infections increases again," he added.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh reported 10 more deaths from Covid-19 in the last 24 hours till 8am Monday. Besides, 339 people were tested positive for the virus during the same period.

Health officials recorded a 1.80% positivity rate after testing 18,812 samples across the country. With the latest additions, the death toll reached 27,778 and the case tally climbed to 15,65,827.

Implementing health insurance will be a landmark: Health minister

It is required to work on reducing expenditure in the health care in the country, and implementing health insurance and enacting health protection law will be a breakthrough in the country's healthcare, said Health Minister Zahid Malik at a meeting at the secretariat on Monday.

Emphasising the importance of ensuring health services for people under the Health Protection Act, the minister said it was important to take initiatives to increase the budget in the health sector.

In the meeting, Zahid Malik said it is true that the budget of the health sector has increased 12 times in the last 21 years. Still, the budget in developed countries is many times higher than that in Bangladesh.

Whereas every government hospital in our country receives three times more patients than its capacity, only 0.9% of the total GDP is spent on medical services, which is over 5% in developed countries, he added.

Former chief secretary to the prime minister Abul Kalam Azad, Senior Secretary of the Department of Health Services Lokman Hossain Mia, Secretary of the Department of Health Education Md Ali Noor, Director General of the Department of Family Planning Sahan Ara Banu and other senior officials were present at the meeting.