Originally published in SSRN on 5 May 2020

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was first identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. Since then, it has been affecting 212 countries and territories around the world. First detected on March 8, 2020, as of April 30, there are 7,667 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Bangladesh, including 130 patients who have recovered and 168 related deaths. We identify the facts of COVID-19 and government’s preventive actions taken in Bangladesh and examine the transmission parameters, infection rate, fatality rate, and recovered rate using the publicly available data until April 30. We estimated the transmission parameters using the susceptible-exposed-infected-cured-dead (SEICD) model and linear regression. Based on these parameters, we then predicted the growth of the infection, cure, and deaths and compared them with reported data. The number of patients infected as of April 30 in Bangladesh closely follows an exponential trend. If this trend continues for fewer weeks, there will be around 50,000 infected patients if necessary steps are not seriously taken by the government. There is now breakneck concern regarding the capacity to respond to needs of infected patients effectively and to prevent this pandemic from further spreading in Bangladesh, one of the densest countries in the world. Health authorities might assimilate this analysis into their disease prevention and control decision-making process.

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