Knowledge gaps and operational challenges in managing COVID-19 in Bangladesh: postpandemic strategies in multi-disaster contexts

The coronavirus (COV2) induced impacts on health, economy, and sociopolitical spheres are added as a new dimension in disaster continuum. The current challenges stretched from impacts of COVID-19 on local communities to the breakdown of globalized systems and frameworks; even the postpandemic adjustments and system recovery will need interscale and holistic understanding by which covariables produced as results of system disruptions could effectively be taken into consideration in the long-term, comprehensive recovery planning process. This needs to generate critical knowledge on the issues mentioned above by paying specific attention on locational attributes, contextual space, and at-scale and interscale connections of the phenomenon. The politicians, professionals, and common people are urging for comprehensive and inclusive actions so that systems (both physical and human) as a whole can work sustainably; environment remains better protected to stop the spillover of disease pathogens from zoonotic sources to humans; human health is cared for strong immune systems to fight against disease. All these issues need critical knowledge on the challenges relating to the use of natural resources, better understanding of biophysical systems, detailed inquiry of the interface between people and nature. This chapter, in this regard, focused on the COVID-19 impacts on local communities in Bangladesh against the global contexts (e.g., return of the overseas employees due to loss of job, vaccine nationalism) and highlights the lessons learned during the last one and half year of pandemic times. The chapter also indicated about the likely global changes in post-COVID era and recommendations made how Bangladesh could rely on long-standing wisdom, instruments (social, economic, technical), and resources and innovate new apparatus to adapt to current conditions and cope with post-COVID new realities.