There are 733 intensive care unit beds at 52 government hospitals and 235 of them in 17 hospitals are dedicated for the treatment of COVID-19 patients, the government said in a report submitted to the High Court. The report said that the Directorate of the Health Services had already introduced hotlines for the distribution of ICU beds among patients with COVID19 and other diseases.

The online bench of Justice M Enayetur Rahim accepted the report and set Sunday to give its decision on the public interest litigation filed by Sheikh Abdullah Al Mamun, also deputy registrar of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University. The petitioner sought a directive on the government to take ICU beds of private hospitals and clinics to meet the high demand of ICU beds for the treatment of COVID19 patients. He also prayed for another directive to the government for creating an online mechanism to distribute ICU beds so that patients would not face any difficulty.

The Anti-Corruption Commission on Wednesday initiated an inquiry into the allegation that low-quality products were passed as N95 masks to some government hospitals by a local company. The commission took the decision of launching an inquiry at a meeting held at the commission head office in the capital with ACC chairman Iqbal Mahmood in the chair. The commission will assign an officer to conduct the inquiry and collect the probe report of the health ministry in this regard.

Earlier on June 3, the commission sent a letter to the health ministry asking for the probe findings. The health ministry recently took some departmental steps after receiving the report of its committee formed on April 21. They argued that the packets with N95 label were obviously printed in Bangladesh and suspected an ill motive behind it. After the COVID-19 was detected in Bangladesh, the Central Medical Stores Depot supplied to government hospitals personal protective equipment that included packets of masks labelled as N95 masks.

The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission has decided to impose three conditions on Grameenphone under its latest initiative for enforcing the Significant Market Power Regulations-2018. The BTRC would issue an order in this regard to the country's leading mobile operator in the next few days based on a decision it made in a recent commission meeting. Another official of the commission said that the conditions would include lowering call termination rate to Tk 0.05 per minute from Tk 0.1 per minute.

In the case of migration to Grameenphone from the other operators - Robi, Banglalink and Teletalk - under the mobile number portability service, customers would get scope for migrating again to the other operators after 60 days. The timeframe will remain unchanged for the customers of the other operators - 90 days. In launching new packages or services, Grameenphone would have to take approval for each of them. Now, Grameenphone like the other operators are allowed to run any new package or service after intimation.

The DNA Laboratory of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has been renamed DNA Bank containing DNA profiles of people. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina officially inaugurated the Forensic DNA Laboratory of CID, a specialised unit of Bangladesh Police, on January 23, 2017. Now, the DNA Laboratory has started its activities after being renamed DNA Bank from Monday last, said Additional SP (Media) of the CID Faruk Hossain.

Since its inception, the laboratory has done profiling of 20,000 DNAs from more than 16,000 pieces of evidence for nearly 6,000 cases, including rape, unidentified body identification, paternity dispute/settlement, robbery, and murder, which have been saved in the servers of LIMS (Laboratory Information Management System), he said. The process of DNA profiling started from January 2014 following a court order. Forensic DNA Laboratory of Bangladesh Police had received first evidence on February 15 that year.