Lockdown Policy Dilemma: COVID-19 Pandemic versus Economy and Mental Health

Lockdown is considered to be the best of policies around the world to fight the deadly virus of COVID-19 which decimated hundreds of people in the last six months. However, this is not a cost-free measure. Billions of dollars worth of economic activities halted hinging upon these measures imposed by the governments of the countries. For instance, IMF predicted that the GDP growth will decline by 4.9 percent in 2020. Global trade is also expected to plummet by 27 percent in the second quarter of the year. In addition, paucity of recreational activities severely affects the mental health of the people. While imposing lockdown, both the cost and benefit should be analyzed to understand the real benefit of these measures on human life. This study critically examines the impact of the lockdown measures on mental health, and the economy of Bangladesh along with the efficacy of the measures on containing the virus. We found that the negative impact on the economy and mental health surpasses the positive impact of curbing the pandemic. It also compares the efficacy of the measures in different countries to find out the pattern that resembles with Bangladesh. From all the data, we conclude that the cost of lockdown measures in the country is greater than the benefit it brings to Bangladesh.

Breaking the back of COVID-19: Is Bangladesh doing enough testing?

Following detection of the first 100 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in early April, Bangladesh stepped up its efforts to strengthen testing capacity in order to curb the spread of the disease across the country. This paper sheds light on the position of Bangladesh in relation to its South Asian neighbors India and Pakistan with respect to testing capacity and ability to detect cases with increased testing. It also analyzes recent data on case counts and testing numbers in Bangladesh, to provide an idea regarding the number of extra tests needed to detect a substantial number of cases within a short period of time. Findings indicate that compared to India and Pakistan, Bangladesh was able to detect more cases by increasing testing levels and expand its testing capacity by performing more per capita tests. In spite of these achievements, the rate of reported cases per 100 tests was consistently higher for Bangladesh compared to India, which suggests that in addition to increased testing, other factors, such as, effective enforcement of social distancing and efficient contact tracing are just as important in curbing the spread of the disease. The analysis reveals that current testing levels in Bangladesh are not adequate. Based on the findings, we recommend a 30-50\% growth of the current test rate in the next few days so that by detecting and isolating more cases, Bangladesh could, in effect, contain the spread of new infections. The challenge, however, is to mobilize resources necessary to expand geographical coverage and improve testing quality while enforcing social distancing and performing efficient contact tracing.

Statistical Learning Methods to Predict Activity Intensity from Body-Worn Accelerometers

Physical activity, especially when performed at moderate or vigorous intensity, has short- and long-term health benefits, but measurement of free-living physical activity is challenging. Accelerometers are popular tools to assess physical activity, although accuracy of conventional accelerometer analysis methods is suboptimal. This study developed and tested statistical learning models for assessing activity intensity from body-worn accelerometers. Twenty-eight adults performed 10-21 activities of daily living in two visits while wearing four accelerometers (right hip, right ankle, both wrists). Accelerometer placement is of crucial practical concern and this paper addresses this issue. Boosting, bagging, random forest and decision tree models were created for each accelerometer and for two-, three-, and four-accelerometer combinations to predict activity intensity. Research staff observations of activity intensity served as the criterion. Point estimates of error for the ankle accelerometer were 2.2-4.7 percentage points lower than other single-accelerometer placements, and the left wrist-ankle combination had errors 0.8-5.8 percentage points lower than other two-accelerometer combinations. Decision trees had poorer accuracy than the other models. Using an accelerometer worn on the lower limb, by itself or in combination with an upper-limb accelerometer, appears to offer optimal accuracy for activity intensity measurement.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic: Concern about Misuse of Antibiotics

Novel coronavirus, a severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) causes COVID-19, which has been a global threat for human health. The infection of coronavirus spread worldwide. Particularly, the rapid spread in the South American and Asian countries is concerning where population density is very high, and health facilities are inadequate compared to developed countries. In developing countries, people are less willing to go to physicians or hospitals to diagnose diseases. Self-medication is a widespread and prominent practice in those countries, particularly taking of antibiotics. Hence, antibiotics, particularly azithromycin and other last-resort antibiotics related to respiratory tract infection, might be misused or overused for COVID-19 treatment. Therefore, we recommend to the responsible authorities to take an urgent initiative to concern the people of developing and least developed countries about the misuse or overuse of antibiotics against the coronavirus.

Glycemic Control and its Predictors among Diabetic Patients Attending a Tertiary Hospital in Nigeria: A Retrospective Observational Study

The prevalence of diabetes and its associated complications have continued to increase globally. Tight glycemic control has been one of the effective ways towards the management of diabetes and its complications. This study was conducted to investigate independent predictors of glycemic levels among patients with diabetes attending a diabetic clinic of a tertiary health care facility. More than half (54.2%) of the 216 participants had good glycemic control. Participants with Body Mass Index (BMI) more than 25 had 79% lower odds of having controlled glycemic levels (95% CI; 0.095, 0.479), compared to those with BMI$<=25. Patients on combination therapy have a significantly higher odds of having good glycemic control compared to those on monotherapy [AOR 3.43 (1.615, 7.302)]. Other identified significant predictors of glycemic control include multiple complications, retinopathy, ethnicity, and self-reported physical activity (p<0.05). Our findings demonstrated that ethnicity, BMI, physical activity, retinopathy, and having more than one complication were independently associated with good glycemic control levels.

COVID-19 May Cause Severe Illness in Diabetic Patients

COVID-19 pandemic has become the top public health concern worldwide that represents a threat to the life of billions of people globally. Common causes of death of COVID-19 infected individuals are multi-organ failure, pneumonia, and acute respiratory distress syndrome, out of which pneumonia is the most common. COVID-19 patients with diabetes are at high risk for medical complications, which may lead to severe complications, even death.

Social Distancing Challenges for Marginal Communities during COVID-19 Pandemic in Bangladesh

This study presents the challenges of marginal communities in maintaining social distances during the COVID-19 pandemic. We focused on garment worker communities in Bangladesh. The current living conditions put the community at high risk due to the contagious nature of COVID-19. The study involved 55 garment workers (32 female) living in three different regions--Ashulia, Gazipur, and Mirpur of Bangladesh. Through a qualitative research method, three critical aspects were studied. First, the inability to maintain social distancing in the community living in close proximity. Second, there is a lack of concern about healthcare among the community and, finally, the absence of preparation for crisis management. The research work proposes policy level intervention for better healthcare in the light of the pandemic that can be helpful in the coming days.

Mass panic during Covid-19 outbreak- A perspective from Bangladesh as a high-risk country

Our brief commentary on the threat and potential impact of the public’s “panic” to the COVID-19 outbreak. As stated, Bangladesh is in a very precarious situation with the imminent threat of disease spreading throughout a densely populated country of over 160 million. We can make parallels to our recent experience with the devastating Dengue virus outbreak. We believe it is essential to share this report with other public health agencies and especially those from low-and-middle-income countries.

Epileptic Seizure Detection Based on Complexity Feature of EEG

Brain disorder characterized by seizure is a common disease among people in the world. Characterization of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals in terms of complexity can be used to identify neurological disorders. In this study, a non-linear epileptic seizure detection method based on multiscale entropy (MSE) has been employed to characterize the complexity of EEG signals. For this reason, the MSE method has been applied on Bonn dataset containing seizure and non-seizure EEG data and the corresponding results in terms of complexity have been obtained. Using statistical tests and support vector machine (SVM), the classification ability of the MSE method has been verified on Bonn dataset. Our results show that the MSE method is a viable approach to identifying epileptic seizure demonstrating a classification accuracy of 91.7%.

Eye Disorders in Bangladesh: A Hospital-based Descriptive Study

The incidence and treatment of common eye disorders in Bangladesh are poorly understood. This study aims to provide a comprehensive overview of this clinical challenge to better enable the design of appropriate healthcare strategies. The incidence and treatment of common eye disorders in Bangladesh are poorly understood. This study aims to provide a comprehensive overview of this clinical challenge to better enable the design of appropriate healthcare strategies. Different types of eye disorder data were collected from patients aged 1 to 96 years admitted for eye surgery from March 2016 to October 2016 (N = 2390) at the Bangladesh Eye Hospital in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Patient age distribution and types of treatment received were analysed, and incidence rates calculated. Patients (58% male) underwent a total of 43 different types of eye surgeries. Among the surgeries reported 32.8% were Avastin intravitreal injections, 25.5% were Phaco with IOL, 14.6% were retinal laser therapies, 7.5% were YAG Laser and 6.5% were VR surgery. It is notable that a higher number of people suffered in ocular, cataract and retinal disorder respectively among all the eye disorders. With increasing patient age, the number of eye disorder treatments increased and it reached to peak number in the age group 56-60 years, although numbers varied greatly across age groups.