COVID variant forces new Bangladesh lockdown, US sends vaccine

Rising infections and crowded hospitals are being seen across Bangladesh, where a stringent lockdown starts on Thursday.

In a state-run hospital near Bangladesh’s border with India, Shahinul Islam prays his father does not become one of the facility’s more than 300 patients who have died this month from the coronavirus. Hundreds like his father are struggling to breathe in the COVID-19 treatment unit, while Islam waits in an emergency room packed with people. Relatives rush in and out, desperately trying to find oxygen cylinders for their loved ones. The crowds of COVID-19 patients and their worried families are new scenes for the 1,200-bed Rajshahi Medical College Hospital, which serves border communities being overrun by the more infectious Delta variant first detected in neighbouring India.