The finding is based on a study conducted by the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR), Bangladesh and International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b).
According to the study, the presence of COVID 19 antibodies was about 74 percent among slum dwellers of Dhaka.
The study also found that 82 percent of the COVID 19 cases were asymptomatic in the city.
During the programme organised to present the findings of the study on Monday, Dr Ferdausi Qadri, senior scientist of the icddr,b, said that the rate of seropositivity among the study population of Dhaka indicates people have started developing herd immunity against the Covid-19.
However, calling it scientifically and ethically problematic, WHO warned against allowing the COVID 19 virus to spread in the hope of achieving ‘herd immunity’. The WHO Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesu said in Geneva that herd community is a concept used for vaccination, in which a population can be protected from a certain virus if a threshold of vaccination is reached, reports AFP. He said that never in the history of public health has herd immunity been used as a strategy for responding to an outbreak, let alone a pandemic.
In the meanwhile, the death toll due to COIVD 19 in Bangladesh has gone up to 5555. According to Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), till Monday, 3.79 lakh people in Bangladesh have been found to be corona positive. The recovery rate has however improved to 77.52 percent in the country.
Rajesh Jha/Dhaka