In the last two weeks of June, Covid-19 infections in two Bangladesh districts increased by over 1000% — according to government data.
Netra News has undertaken analysis on the District Level data on confirmed infections in a two week period between June 15th to 30th. The data is taken from documents uploaded every day or so on the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) site. It does not include data from Dhaka City.
One should be cautious in considering the results of this analysis
First, the government only provides information on around 55–60% of the data. It is not clear whether this data is or is not representative of all the data
Second, the number of confirmed infections is in part dependent on the availability of tests and the willingness of people to get tested. A large number of positive tests in one district may mean that there has been a lot of testing in that district; and a small number of positive tests may mean there has been limited testing.
Nonetheless, this analysis provides some insight into the current Covid-19 epidemic throughout Bangladesh
Districts with the highest increases in confirmed infections
There are seven districts whose numbers of infections increased considerably in the two week period — all over 500%. And in two of these districts — Bogra and Tangail — infections increased by over 1000%. (It is notable, of course that some of these districts started off with very small numbers of infections, so relatively low level of additional infections can result in large percentage increases.)
Districts with highest number of confirmed infections
Here are the 9 Districts with the highest total number of confirmed infections — each has more than 2000 total confirmed infections. As a result of the significant increase in infections in Bogra (see above), the district now has the sixth highest number of infections
Districts with the highest rate of confirmed infections
However, the more important statistic is the rate of infections per million of the population. Here are the 9 districts with the highest rate of infections — all over 600 cases per million of the population. It is notable that Bogra now has the seventh highest rate of infections.
Districts with the lowest rate of confirmed infections
And here are the districts with the lowest rates of infection — all under 100 infections per million of the population
* To determine the estimated population of districts we used section 4.2.5 of the “Population Projection of Bangladesh: Dynamics and Trends” published by Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics. This sets out the estimated populations of each district between 2016 to 2061. We used the year 2016, and using the estimated population numbers, worked out the percentage of the population of each district compared to the whole of the country. The UN estimated population for Bangladesh is 164.7 million. We then used the percentages and worked out the estimated population of each district assuming that the total population of the country was 164.7 million
