Covid-19: Youth deaths are on the rise in second wave

In the second wave of Covid-19 in Bangladesh, the death rate of young people has been increasing in the last two weeks whereas the death toll was the highest among people above 60 years earlier.

In the last two weeks, 64 people between the ages of 10 and 40 have died.

Besides, more youth are being infected at present.

Deaths in novel coronavirus are breaking new records every day in the country as it reported 77 more deaths from the virus in the last 24 hours, the highest since the pandemic hit the country last year.

The death toll reached 9,661 in the country with an infection rate of 1.42%.

According to the Department of Health, 56.2% of the deaths in Covid-19 in the country are over 60 years of age.

Among other deceased, 24.61% was 51-60-year-olds, 11.12% was 41-50-year-olds, 4.97% was 31-40-year-olds, 1.97% was 21-30-year-olds and 77% are 0-20-year-olds.

In the past 24 hours until Saturday, six people aged between 21 to 40 died of Covid-19. The day before, seven people of this age group had died.

The death rate among youth is worrying physicians.

Dr Nazneen Rahman, an anaesthesiologist at the 500-bed Kurmitola General Hospital, told The Business Standard (TBS) that many young patients are now being admitted to the ICU.

"We are getting critical patients below 30 and many of them need intensive care," she added.

According to the icddr,b, the South African variant is 81% of the variants in the fourth week of March in Bangladesh, which is around 70% based on various media reports.

In the meantime, Bangladesh has reported the presence of the UK variant, which is also very contagious.

Professor Nazrul Islam, a noted virologist and member of the National Technical Advisory Committee on Covid-19, told TBS that the death rate was higher among older patient and have comorbidities but now young people are also dying. Besides, many patients are dying due to lack of treatment as the capacity of the hospitals is exceeded.

Professor Nazrul Islam said that young people are a bit indifferent about following health rules but now people of all ages have to wear masks and follow hygiene rules because the patient's condition is rapidly deteriorating in the new variant. Everyone needs to protect themselves.

Meanwhile, following a sharp rise in Covid-19 infections over the past few days, the number of cases on Saturday dropped, with 5,343 fresh cases recorded in the last 24 hours.

The number was 7,462 on Friday and 6,854 the day before yesterday.

The Covid-19 caseload now stands at 6,78,937 with an infection rate of 20.49%.

However, the number of samples tested in the last 24 hours was also lower than that of the last few days.

On Saturday, Bangladesh tested 26,077 samples while the numbers were 31,654 and 33,193 respectively on Friday and Thursday.

Among the latest day's victims, 53 were men and 24 were women. All of them died in different hospitals across the country.

The gender breakdown of Covid-19 victims shows that 7,226 of the total deceased were men and 2,435 were women.

The country's maiden cases were reported on 8 March last year and the first death from the virus was reported on 18 March.