COVID-19 Outbreak Situations in Bangladesh: An Empirical Analysis

Md Hasinur Rahaman Khan; Ahmed Hossain

But for people in one of the densest countries on earth, it is difficult task to maintain social distancing, despite closing of educational institutes, offices, and markets may contribute considerably to reducing spread, while commuting in crowded public transport or even living in cheek by jowl urban slums. Besides, public healthcare system in Bangladesh is not sufficient, rather is overburdened. According to World Bank data (WB, 2020) , Bangaldesh in 2015 has 0.8 hospital beds for every 1,000 people; by way of comparison, the India has 0.7 (2011), the Pakistan has 0.6 (2012), the SriLanka has 3.6 (2012), US has 2.9 (2012) while China has 4.2 (2012) beds per 1,000 people. Currently, hospitals in Bangladesh have total 1,169 ICU beds of which 432 are in government hospital and the remaining 737 in the private hospitals against a population of 170 milion ("The Daily DhakaTribune", March 21, 2020). Total number of ICU beds in a hospital should be between 5% and 12% depending on the care given by the hospital [ (Kennedy & Pronovost, 2006) , (Nafseen, 2018) ]. In 2017-18, the total number of beds in hospitals were 1,27,360, among them 48,934 were in governmental hospitals and 78,426 were in private hospitals [(Nafseen, 2018) , (Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, 2017) ]. Currently, Bangladesh has total 141,903 hospital beds ("The Daily DhakaTribune", March 21, 2020), which is 0.84 beds for every 1,000 people.