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Purpose - This study aims to explore the online services provided by the university libraries of Bangladesh during the COVID-19 pandemic and how they cope up with the new demands of the students and faculties to support online teaching and learning activities. Design/methodology/approach - The descriptive research design of the online survey was used to collect data from 50 public and private university libraries. The population of this study was 160 UGC-approved universities in Bangladesh. A structured online questionnaire was developed using Google Forms and delivered to 72 university libraries via Email. 50 university libraries responded to the survey, and later the data were analyzed using SPSS v-25.0. Findings - The findings of this study reveal that to support online teaching and learning, and research activities, most of the university libraries of Bangladesh started to provide online library services for their patrons. This study suggests libraries need to improve their technical infrastructure and provide equal opportunity to each professional for acquiring new technical skills of various emerging library tools and techniques to disseminate knowledge using a digital platform. Libraries also need to promote their services through email and social media to make library users aware of the new services and also need to secure more funding from the university authorities to acquire more electronic resources. Limitations - With the COVID-19 movement and safety restrictions, we had to rely only on online data collection methods. We could not manage a large part of the university libraries because the contact information was available on the university web directory. Originality - This study will provide a comprehensive idea about the ability of the university libraries of Bangladesh to provide online library services in emergency/pandemic situations. A few studies have been published that focused on university library services during the COVID-19 pandemic situation. This study is the first effort to provide a combined picture of all the online services offered to the patrons by public and private university libraries in Bangladesh. The researchers believe that the library professionals, university authorities, and policymakers in Bangladesh will highly be benefited from this research by understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the online library services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amid growing debate between scientists and policymakers on the trade-off between public safety and reviving economy during the COVID-19 pandemic, the government of Bangladesh decided to relax the countrywide lockdown restrictions from the beginning of June 2020. Instead, the Ministry of Public Affairs officials have declared some parts of the capital city and a few other districts as red zones or high-risk areas based on the number of people infected in the late June 2020. Nonetheless, the COVID-19 infection rate had been increasing in almost every other part of the country. Ironically, rather than ensuring rapid tests and isolation of COVID-19 patients, from the beginning of July 2020, the Directorate General of Health Services restrained the maximum number of tests per laboratory. Thus, the health experts have raised the question of whether the government is heading toward achieving herd immunity instead of containing the COVID-19 pandemic. In this paper, the dynamics of the pandemic due to SARS-CoV-2 in Bangladesh is analyzed with integrated the Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) in the SIRD model. We demonstrate that the herd immunity threshold can be reduced to 31% than that of 60% by considering age group cluster analysis resulting in a total of 53.0 million susceptible populations. With the data of COVID-19 cases till January, 2021, the time-varying reproduction numbers are used to explain the nature of the pandemic. Based on the estimations of active, severe and critical cases, we discuss a set of policy recommendations to improve the current pandemic control methods in Bangladesh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As one of the most densely populated countries in the world, Bangladesh has been trying to contain the impact of a pandemic like coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) since March, 2020. Although government announced an array of restricted measures to slow down the diffusion in the beginning of the pandemic, the lockdown has been lifted gradually by reopening all the industries, markets and offices with a notable exception of educational institutes. As the physical geography of Bangladesh is highly variable across the largest delta, the population of different regions and their lifestyle also differ in the country. Thus, to get the real scenario of the current pandemic and a possible second wave of COVID-19 transmission across Bangladesh, it is essential to analyze the transmission dynamics over the individual districts. In this paper, we propose to integrate the Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) with classic SIRD model to explain the epidemic evolution of individual districts in the country. We show that UKF-SIRD model results in a robust prediction of the transmission dynamics for 1–4 months. Then we apply the robust UKF-SIRD model over different regions in Bangladesh to estimates the course of the epidemic. Our analysis demonstrates that in addition to the densely populated areas, industrial areas and popular tourist spots will be in the risk of higher COVID-19 transmission if a second wave of COVID-19 occurs in the country. In the light of these outcomes, we also provide a set of suggestions to contain the future pandemic in Bangladesh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent pandemics caused by coronavirus infections have become major challenges in 21st century human health. Scientists are struggling hard to develop a complete cure for infectious diseases, for example, drugs or vaccines against these deadly infectious diseases. We have searched papers on thymoquinone (TQ) and its effects on different infectious diseases in databases like Pubmed, Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar, and reviewed them in this study. To date research suggests that natural products may become a potential therapeutic option for their prodigious anti-viral or antimicrobial effects on infectious diseases. TQ, a natural phytochemical from black seeds, is known for its health-beneficial activities against several diseases, including infections. It is evident from different in vitro and in vivo studies that TQ is effective against tuberculosis, influenza, dengue, Ebola, Zika, hepatitis, malaria, HIV, and even recent pandemics caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome of coronaviruses (SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2). In these cases, the molecular mechanism of TQ is partly clear but mostly obscure. In this review article, we have discussed the role of TQ against different infectious diseases, including COVID-19, and also critically reviewed the future use of TQ use to fight against infectious diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bangladesh has been combating the COVID-19 pandemic with limited financial resources and poor health infrastructure since March, 2020. Although the government has imposed several restricted measures to curb the progression of the outbreak, these arrays of measures are not sustainable in the long run. In this paper, we use a data-driven forecasting model considering susceptible, exposed, infected, recovered and deaths status through time to assess the impact of lift of flexible lockdown on the COVID-19 dynamics in Bangladesh. Our analysis demonstrates that the country might experience second infection peak in six to seven months after the withdrawal of current lockdown. Moreover, a prolonged restrictions until January, 2021 will shift the infection peak towards August, 2021 and reduce approximately 20% COVID-19 cases in Bangladesh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]