Variant surge at border forces Bangladesh into new lockdown

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — 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've 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 worried kin 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 neighboring India.

Over 450 people with COVID-19 were admitted on Tuesday to the state-run hospital in Rajshahi district's main city.

Islam said his entire family has been shunned by people in his home village closer to the border. “The other villagers are afraid of us. They don’t talk to us. When they see us on the road, they take a different path,” he said. “We are suffering a lot,” he added.

Rising infections and crowded hospitals are being seen across Bangladesh, where a stringent lockdown starts Thursday. The government will deploy military soldiers, paramilitary border officers and riot police to enforce the lockdown, set initially for one week. Authorities warn that the rapid surge in border areas is accelerating the virus' spread further into Bangladesh, and the increasing number of infections from the delta variant could devastate the South Asian nation of more than 160 million people.

“If people do not maintain health safety rules and if they do not stay at home, this wave of the pandemic in Bangladesh could be catastrophic. It spreads fast and it kills more people,” said S.M. Alamgir, a chief...