Tuhin Shubhra Adhikary

More and more frontline healthcare workers are getting infected, making the country’s battle against the deadly coronavirus harder.

At least 5,001 of them have tested positive, and 62 doctors were confirmed to have died from Covid-19 as of Sunday, according to Bangladesh Medical Association (BMA).

Of the infected, there are 1,724 doctors, 1,352 nurses and 1,925 other employees.

Infection of such a large number of frontline healthcare workers is an immense burden on the country’s health system, especially since there are too few of them against such a large population, experts said.

As of yesterday, 11 other doctors, mostly senior ones, died with what appeared to be coronavirus, says Bangladesh Doctors’ Foundation (BDF).

“Although there are fewer new cases among healthcare workers lately, the total number is still high,” said BMA Secretary General Ehteshamul Huq Choudhury.

More health workers got infected in the Southeast Asian countries, compared to other regions. And the number is the highest in Bangladesh, he told The Daily Star yesterday.

Of the total cases in Bangladesh, 3.08 percent were health workers as of Sunday.

This indicates that many health workers still do not have adequate protection against the infection, experts said.

The main causes of infection among health workers are the poor personal protective equipment (PPE) supplied at the beginning of the outbreak and patients concealing their symptoms, according to Ehteshamul.

Delayed introduction of triage at hospitals is also responsible for the situation, he said.

Triage is the process of determining the priority of a patient’s treatment based on the severity of their condition or the likelihood of their recovery with or without treatment.

After the prime minister’s intervention, doctors were provided with proper PPE, and the number of new infections reduced.