Perception of COVID-19 in Bangladesh: Interplays of Class and Capital

Abstract

This article delineates the lay perceptions of COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh. More specifically, it discusses how people interpret the origin and transmission of COVID-19. Like the other countries of the world, this virus appeared as a new phenomenon in Bangladesh and is now known as coronarog. The transmission of this virus added new terms such as lockdown, quarantine, isolation, et cetera, to the popular discourse and produced a new experience. The high rates of infection and death caused by the virus have percolated fear and anxiety among people. Excessive fear about the disease has led to the stigmatisation of the disease and the infected. Drawing on observation, media reports and qualitative interviews, this article argues that laypeople use either a personalistic or a naturalistic explanation to make sense of the disease. Their explanations are associated with their access to different types of capital. This article contributes to medical anthropology literature on health and illness by explaining the cultural model of illness classification related to COVID-19.

Introduction

On 20 March 2020, a news story of the Prothom-Alo, a leading Bengali language daily in Bangladesh, attracted the attention of many readers. The news accompanied a picture that showed that many people gathered in front of a house, and they were trying to peep into the house where a person was in quarantine. Although the house was surrounded by high brick walls and the entrance was under lock and key, they ventured to watch what was happening inside. A person of that house, a returnee from Australia, wanted to stay in home quarantine for the safety of his family members as well as the community. This news spread among his relatives and neighbours and induced curiosity among them to see what quarantine looked like. The term and the process of ‘quarantine’ was completely alien to people in Bangladesh before the COVID-19 pandemic. In a kin-based society like Bangladesh where kin responsibility and hospitality stand as an essential part of people’s social life, the idea of ‘quarantine’ produced mixed experiences for them. This incident occurred in Habiganj district, in the north-eastern part of Bangladesh, in March 2020, when Bangladeshi people came across the terms such as coronavirus, quarantine and isolation through news media for the first time in their lives.

Many incidents related to COVID-19 were reported during the first couple of months after the state declared the detection of COVID-19 cases on 08 March (Paul 2020, March 8). After the declaration, the law enforcement agencies locked down the whole country, which continued from the third week of March to mid-May. The lockdown was partially withdrawn for the Eid ul-Fitr festival in May. After the festival, many governmental and non-governmental organisations and factories opened their offices and continued to operate for a few hours daily, following health safety measures. Buses and trains also started to run throughout the country to transport people on a limited scale. However, educational institutions remained closed and opted for online classes. In this crisis, people have been struggling to learn a new lifestyle by maintaining ‘social distance’. The practice of social distance suggests staying away from friends and relatives, and obviously from the COVID-19-affected people, which challenges the cultural norms of the country. In Bangladesh, it is expected that relatives and friends shall visit and take care of a sick person (Begum 2015; Nichter 2002). In the new context, people’s reactions have been mixed. Some people maintained complete lockdown and social distance and left their COVID-19-infected family members at the hospital alone. In some cases, family members themselves looked after the corona-positive members, ignoring the fear of contagion. Some people willingly follow the necessary ‘health safety measures’, while some do it when they are compelled by law enforcement agencies. Newspapers reported many stories about how people attended various social events ignoring the lockdown rules (Ahmed 2020). The above-mentioned snapshots of incidences indicate that concepts such as ‘social distance’, ‘lockdown’, ‘quarantine’, ‘isolation’, et cetera, have been encountered and perceived by people in various ways.

This article investigates the diverse dimensions of people’s experiences regarding the interpretations of the COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh. Drawing on data from people of diversified backgrounds and media reports, it attempts to explain how people perceived this virus. How did they etiologically explain it? How did their experiences vary, based on class and access to cultural and social capital?

Theoretical Framework

This research uses Foster’s (1998) conception of etiological explanation and Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of capital as its theoretical framework. Etiological explanation refers to how people explain the origin of illness. People categorise illnesses as severe, dangerous, normal or abnormal, based on the existing etiological explanation of society (Fosu 1981). Foster (1998) analysed the etiological explanations of various societies and divided them into two categories: the first one was a naturalistic etiological explanation and the other was a personalistic etiological explanation. A naturalistic etiological explanation defines ‘illness in impersonal, systematic terms. The disease is thought to stem, not from the machinations of an angry being, but rather from such natural forces or conditions as cold, heat, winds, dampness, and above all, by an upset in the balance of the basic body elements’ (Foster 1998: 112). On the other hand, a personalistic etiological explanation, unlike a naturalistic explanation, defines illnesses as an outcome of ‘the active, purposeful intervention of an agent, who may be human (a witch or sorcerer), nonhuman (a ghost, an ancestor or an evil spirit), or supernatural (a deity or other very powerful being)’ (Foster 1998: 112).

Janzen (1978), in his research among the BaKongo of lower Zaire, observed that people consider various factors to explain the origin of an illness, and they have their logic behind that. The BaKongo categorise illnesses into two types: the one is ‘illnesses of God’ or illnesses caused by the natural factors, and the other is ‘illnesses of Man’ or illnesses caused by human beings. The natural factors of illnesses include heat, cold, et cetera. On the other hand, the reasons for man-made illnesses include incestuous marriage, witchcraft, lack of marriage payment, lack of father’s blessings during the marriage, clan conflict, et cetera. To explain the ‘Illness of God’, a naturalistic etiological explanation is required, while the ‘illness of man’ requires a personalistic etiological explanation. Janzen (1978) notes that when a person assesses an illness as natural, he undergoes therapy or therapies, but when therapies fail to cure it, they change their opinion and consider it as ‘not normal’ or ‘man-made’. Their rethinking invokes them to consult close kin, if necessary, extended kin, clan members and also the traditional healers.

Begum (2015) in her study explained how people in rural Bangladesh categorise illnesses. She observed that rural people categorise illnesses into four categories such as oshukh, dushi, jadu and gojob. According to her, oshukh or rog usually refers to those discomforts that have naturalistic etiological explanations. Oshukh refers to an ‘imbalance between the mind and body, between the climate and body or between the body and the work’ (Begum 2015: 87). On the other hand, dushi, jadu and gojob occur due to unnatural causes like the attack of evil spirits or forces and have a personalistic etiological explanation. She argues, ‘The nature of illnesses due to jadu is in many ways similar to those of dushi, but the illnesses caused by jadu occur because of human activity while the illnesses caused by dushi occur due to non-human agents’ (Begum 2015: 100). And, finally, gojob refers to Allah’s punishment, which is sanctioned because of his anger.

Alongside the etiological explanations, the idea of capital is important to understand people’s perception of the disease. According to Bourdieu (1986), people can utilise three types of capital: economic, cultural and social. Economic capital refers to something that is ‘immediately and directly convertible into money and maybe institutionalised in the form of property rights (i.e., material wealth)’ (Bourdieu 1986: 243). Cultural capital may be institutionalised in the form of educational qualifications (i.e., creative and intellectual skills). It can exist in three forms: in the embodied state (i.e., the dispositions of mind and body), in the objectified state (i.e., in the form of cultural goods such as pictures, books and instruments) and in the institutionalised state (i.e., in the form of recognised qualifications like academic degrees). Social capital is ‘made up of social obligations (“connections”) and “maybe institutionalised in the form of a title of nobility”’ (i.e., existing or potential resources an individual can dispose of because of their social connections or networking) (Bourdieu 1984: 243).

Using the concepts of etiological explanations and capital, this study explains how people in Bangladesh define the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methodology

This study uses both primary and secondary data. Primary data were collected from interviews, while secondary data were collected from newspaper articles, television reports and social media posts. Twenty people of different socio-economic backgrounds were selected for interviews by employing a purposive sampling method. Informal interviews were conducted among the respondents from March to June 2020. Since informal interviews do not follow any structured question/answer format, they are considered important tools to collect qualitative data.

Among the interviewees, 10 were from Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, and the epicentre of the COVID-19 cases in the country. Among these 10 interviewees, 5 interviewees (including 2 men and 3 women) belong to the middle class, who are economically stable and have educational qualifications up to a Master’s degree and have jobs in the public or private sector. They have wider access to news media such as television, newspapers, the Internet and have large social networks compared to the people belonging to the working class. The other five interviewees (including two men and three women) from Dhaka city belong to the working-class background and are illiterate. They all live in Kamrangirchar, a small district in Dhaka city, and work in and around the campus of the University of Dhaka. Three interviewees work as domestic help in the residential areas of the university, while two are rickshaw-pullers.

Alongside these 10 interviewees, another 10 men and women were selected from the rural areas where the infection rate of COVID-19 was relatively low. The name of the village was Rupsha (pseudonym) and situated in the northern part of the country. Reflecting on the socio-economic diversity of people in the village, five interviewees (including three men and two women) were selected from the middle class. Each of their families owned a sizeable amount of land and had an educational background up to a Bachelor’s degree. Another five interviewees (including two men and three women) belonged to the poor landless group, who lacked any formal education and lived their life by selling labour. Villages represented a different geographical landscape marked by quietness, low density of people, and these were spaces where people were tied together by various social relations and responsibilities. The purpose of choosing interviewees both from urban and rural settings and from various socio-economic and educational backgrounds was to compare their differential experiences based on their access to different types of capital.

Some interviews were taken face to face, while some were conducted over the phone. Particularly, the interviews from outside Dhaka were conducted over the phone. One key informant in the village established contacts between the researcher and the interviewees. In Dhaka, five interviews were taken in person, while the rest were conducted over the phone. This article employed pseudonyms of the village and the interviewees to protect their privacy. Interviews from different urban and rural settings assisted in understand whether there was any relation between geographical diversity and people’s understandings of disease.

Perception of Coronavirus Disease

This study has found different conceptions of COVID-19 in Bangladeshi society. People call COVID-19 as coronarog and define it as a disease of the rich, an urban disease, a gojob and consider it as the danger as well as death. People’s perceptions of the disease are linked with their class, access to capital, geographical locations and the duration of the health crisis.

Coronarog as a Disease of the Rich

In the first phase of the COVID-19 outbreak, the urban working-class people defined coronarog as an illness of the rich. They offer a personalistic etiological explanation to explain the illness. Data from the working-class respondents suggest that they did not have any ‘scientific’ explanation on symptoms, diagnosis or transmission process of COVID-19. They heard about COVID-19 either from television news or from their colleagues or the educated people they worked for. They developed this perception from two sources. First, they heard that the illness mostly occurred in countries such as China, Italy and the USA, which they considered as rich countries. Second, at the initial stage of the outbreak, the Bangladeshi returnees from Europe, China or the Middle East were identified as carriers of the virus. Their limited access to cultural and social capital inhibited them from understanding the scientific causes of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Like many other countries in the world, Bangladesh also saw the outbreak of the virus from March 2020. However, discussions and concerns over the consequences of the virus started before March when the people of Wuhan in China were fighting with this new virus. Their anxiety and helplessness caught the attention of Bangladeshi media and the elites. After the official declaration of the existence of COVID-19 in March, the apprehended anxiety and fear became a part of people’s everyday lives.

At the beginning of March, it was a huge concern in the country that COVID-19 could spread among people from those who were returning either from Italy or the Middle East where the virus spread with full vigor. Nodi, a domestic help who is 25 years old and a mother of a 4-year-old son said during the interview:

We heard that a disease called coronarog came to our country. This is a disease of rich people who are returning from abroad. We don’t have any such case in our Char (Kamrnagirchar). You know, the people who are returning from abroad are rich and they live in good neighborhoods, not in slums. So, the corona will not catch us.

She did not have any clue about the symptoms of the disease and only heard that people were dying from it. While she was asked about having symptoms such as fever, cough and headache, she went on to say that:

Those are normal rogs (diseases). We all have to work hard all day long….be it rain or heat. It is very usual for us to have fever, cough, or headache from time to time. Many of my neighbors are suffering from these at the moment…and it is very common…nothing to be worried about it. That is not corona.

Similar to Nodi, Hasina who is 35 years old and a mother of two children was not concerned about having fever or cough. She said, ‘We work hard every day. We are fine with cough and fever. It will not make us helpless. Those who are living a luxury life are worried’.

The working-class people were confused about the remedies of the disease as that seemed meaningless to them. Since the early stage of the breakout, the government, many voluntary organisations and the media campaigned to wash hands, maintain social distance, rub hands with sanitisers, et cetera, to fight the virus. In response to a question on such efforts, Rahim, a rickshaw-puller who was 35 years old, said:

I don’t understand what people are talking about. If the illness attacks us, we will see then. They all are saying to wash hands frequently. We pull rickshaws all day. How is it possible to wash hands frequently? At the slum, we many people share a room, kitchen, and washroom.

At the beginning of the outbreak, the working-class people did not care about the symptoms and the transmission of the virus. To them, coronarog seemed something which was very far away from them and could not infect them. Relying on a personalistic etiology, they surmised that it happens to rich people and is spread by rich people. The virus lives in the high-rise buildings, not in the slums.

Coronarog as an Urban Disease

The rural working-class people defined coronarog as an urban disease. They also banked on a personalistic etiological explanation. At the beginning of the outbreak, Dhaka and other main cities such as Chittagong, Sylhet and Narayanganj turned into hotspots for the virus. The rate of infection in the rural areas was very low; at many places, there were no reported cases. Life was as usual. Although the local administration took some measures to make people aware of the virus, most paid no heed to them. Moriom, a 45-year-old woman and a mother of three children says, ‘We heard that the disease broke out in Dhaka. We see no problem in our village’. She went on to say:

The village life is normal because we don’t have the disease. It exists in the towns. Since we don’t have any problem we stay as usual. We meet neighbors. My son goes to mosque congregations regularly. The only problem is that sometimes the police force people to stay home. I don’t know why they (police) do so. We, the village people, love to see each other. In towns, people don’t know their neighbors. They can stay in their homes without seeing each other. It is not possible in the village. But sometimes we have to return home from outside when we see the police.

With the passing time, in their ‘normal life’, the villagers experienced some changes. For example, many villagers who were working in the garment industry in Dhaka or other cities returned to their villages as many industries were shut down. According to Moriom, ‘it is painful for the families whose members lost jobs. No one knew when they would get another job’. However, she was not concerned about the transmission of the virus that could spread from the returning population. To her: ‘They are our people (village people). I heard that the disease may come to the village if any unknown person from another village or the town visits us’.

The working-class population in both urban and rural areas lacked ‘proper’ knowledge about the origin of the disease and its transmission. However, the rich with access to cultural and social capital offered a different perspective.

Nazia Rahman, a 38-year-old woman who taught at a school said:

I don’t know what will happen to us. The situations that we are observing in Wuhan and Italy are so scary. If it comes to Bangladesh, I can’t think about that. We have a huge population. If it starts spreading at a massive scale, thousands of people will die every day.

She continued by saying that ‘everyone needs to think about it. We need mass campaigns to make people aware in advance’. Nazia Raman learnt about the transmission process of the virus and that made her worried. Similar concerns were expressed by other interviewees as well who belong to the middle class. They subscribed to a naturalistic etiological explanation. Some interviewees sought the success of the lockdown, which was ongoing from the third week of March. Mrs Salma Sultana, a housewife and a mother of two children who obtained her Master’s degree from a public university said: ‘At least, the government needs to shut down the schools. I am sending my kids to the school with great anxiety and fear’. Her anxiety and fear about the virus originated from various media reports and the discussions in her relatives’ or friends’ networks. Mrs Salma Sultana was worried about the contagious nature of the virus. Although she did not have any relatives or friends coming to visit her from outside the country, she was concerned about her neighbours. She said, ‘Sometimes I asked the security personnel of our apartment building whether anyone from abroad came to the building because if anyone comes from abroad with the virus in this multistoried building, everyone’s life will be at risk’. To stay safe, she followed various health safety measures such as washing hands and drinking herbal tea, and avoided going outside except for meeting urgent needs. She was also careful to avoid unnecessary contact with outside people. Another interviewee, Mrs Habiba Rahman who is 35 years old, a housewife, mother of two children and a wife of a university teacher said:

I am working hard these days. A woman (domestic help) used to support me to do my household chores but I gave her leave for three weeks. Although many people continue to take services from domestic helps and chauffeurs who live in the city slums, we are maintaining complete isolation from outsiders since my husband is a diabetic patient and I have two little kids…. I have to be careful.

Their access to cultural and social capital like education and social networks contributed to the middle class’ perception of the disease. They perceived the COVID-19 pandemic as a ‘life-threatening’ thing and resorted to following some practices to keep them safe. Greater access to cultural and social capital influenced them to have a ‘naturalistic’ and ‘scientific’ definition of the disease. On the other hand, the working-class population who lacked education and economic capital but owned limited social capital were more dependent on personalistic etiological explanations and were less likely to have scientific explanations of the disease. People’s understandings and narratives about health and illness greatly varied according to their class position and access to capital with some exceptions.

Coronarog as Gojob

Everyone, including the rich, the middle class and the working class, showed changes to their interpretations of the disease when it persisted and spread to a vast area of the country and defined it as a gojob or Allah’s punishment out of frustration.

This change in the perception was observed during mid-April to May, the second phase of the interviewing. This time, they all faced harsh economic realities as a consequence of the lockdown. During the lockdown, many people lost their jobs and were seeking financial help. Joblessness, hunger and a high infection rate forced people to think about the illness differently. Many village people, who used to work in Dhaka and other main cities, returned to their villages. The working-class population failed to maintain household expenditures and faced an uncertain future. Frustration and helplessness caused by joblessness came up during the discussions of the second phase. During this time, infection and death cases were not only limited to urban cities but also spread to the villages, maybe at a slow pace. The local administrations initiated campaigns to make people aware of maintaining health safety measures and social distance. The government distributed relief through the local elected bodies. In some cases, misappropriations spoilt the goodwill of the government. Gradually, people experienced the wrath of poverty and hunger in their daily life. A woman from the village, Moriom, said:

My daughter and her husband are staying in Dhaka with great pain. My son-in-law runs an auto-rickshaw which acts as the primary means of their livelihood. But for the last couple of months, his income dropped dramatically due to the lockdown. They could not pay their house rent for the last two months. They don’t know how long the house owner would allow this. They cannot return to the village since they have nothing to do here. In the last months, I sent two thousand taka from my savings. But I cannot give them anymore. I don’t know what’s waiting for them.

Like Moriom, Rahamot Mia also echoed the same frustration. Rahamot Mia, who is 25 years old and used to work in a construction farm in Rangpur (the adjacent town) as a day labourer, lost his job two months ago. He said, ‘Due to the lockdown all construction activities are suspended and we have become penniless. In the last month, I borrowed some money from friends and neighbors. If this lockdown continues we would die from hunger for sure’. A similar situation was faced by the poor of Dhaka city. Nodi, the domestic help who used to work in three houses as a part-time worker, lost her two jobs due to the pandemic, and her husband who used to work as a chauffeur lost 50% of his monthly salary. Nodi said:

We did not leave Dhaka city for our village home. In the village, who would pay for our expenditure? Here in Dhaka, we face troubles but can somehow survive with the reduced income. It is very hard to survive with this little money after paying the house rent. I don’t know when this situation will end. I am praying to Allah every single day to rescue us from this situation.

Similar fate haunted the rickshaw-pullers. The number of passengers and trips dropped suddenly. Rickshaw-puller Rahim said, ‘We had nothing to do with the disease. The rich people brought it from abroad. But we don’t know why Allah is making us suffer’.

The people from the working class believe that Allah has become disappointed due to the continuous misdeeds of people. Now, this punishment has destroyed the whole country. Rahamot Mia explains:

When a gojob comes, you cannot counter it alone as such punishments are the result of collective wrongdoing. The whole society needs to ask for forgiveness to Allah. You can pray alone but you need to ask mercy for everyone. Without His mercy, it would not be possible to destroy the corona.

Domestic help Nodi and Hasina echoed the same:

We are sinners. We couldn’t perform prayers regularly. People have time for everything except prayers. Now Allah became angry and handed down this punishment to us.

Khadija, a senior lady of the village, said, ‘Pandemic is a god’s punishment. When most people of a society deviate from good-will, good work, and an honest lifestyle, Allah punishes them. Now, this is the time to ask for forgiveness’.

Similar to people from the working class, the rich also accept COVID-19 as a gojob alongside maintaining their trust in the germ theory to explain the existence of the virus. Mr Kashem who owns two apartments in Dhaka city and a shop in a busy shopping mall said:

I used to rent out one apartment and earn a good deal of money from my business. In the last month, the tenant left. Now, it is very difficult to get another tenant during this situation. Moreover, I am also struggling with my business. No income is generated from there, but I have to pay for the salaries of the workers. I don’t know what would happen if this continues for months. Then, I have to close the business.

Nazia, the school teacher, has been receiving 25% less salary than the regular amount every month as the school’s income has fallen due to the COVID-19 pandemic. She went on to say, ‘I am praying to Allah to save us from this pandemic’. She also believes that COVID-19 is a gojob but maintains the required health safety measures to keep her safe. Nazia informed that she and her family members follow certain health safety measures such as taking vitamin D, zinc tablets, lime water and herbal tea to keep themselves safe from the attack of the virus alongside saying their regular prayers.

As the virus continues to spread and cause suffering among people in addition to the loss in income, everyone from the working class to the rich have become frustrated and have begun to consider the virus as a gojob. The working-class people, who have low economic, cultural and social capital, rely only on Allah’s forgiveness for the recovery, while the people who have wider access to economic, cultural and social capital follow health safety measures alongside seeking divine interventions.

Coronarog as the Danger and Death

All the respondents have something in common—they are all terrified by the disease. The contagious nature of the disease, the increasing number of deaths and hospitals’ refusal to treat patients at the beginning of the outbreak have scared them. Excessive fear led to the stigmatisation of the disease and the sufferer (Bhuiyan and Begum 2020). Stigmatisation refers to a process of ascribing negative stereotypes to people, groups or things. A stigmatised person is ostracised by the community and is discriminated. According to Nazia, ‘COVID-19 created fear in people’s minds with the information that the dead body can also spread the virus’. Initially, the dead bodies of the COVID-19-infected people were buried or cremated by special teams. In June, the government officially declared that after 3–4 h of death, the body is unable to spread the virus (Dhaka Tribune 2020). Despite this official declaration, the burial process of the dead remained the same as that was practised in the initial stage of the pandemic. Mrs Habiba said, ‘It is very unfortunate if you die of the corona. Nobody, even not the family members, can attend your janaza (a Muslim death ritual). The burial process I watched on television news made me scary’. Like the middle-class people, the working-class women of Dhaka and Rupsha also considered the dead body of a COVID-19-infected person as ‘dangerous’. Hasina, the working-class woman from Dhaka, said, ‘I heard from my neighbors that the body is also dangerous. No one attends the janaza’. Moriom said, ‘I heard that a person died of corona in our neighboring village. He died in a hospital in the town. His relatives did not bring the body to the village because they heard that the villagers would not allow that. They buried him in a graveyard in the town’.

Many people became fearful of COVID-19 to see the burial process, which was unusual in the Bangladeshi context. For example, at the end of March, a video went viral on social media that showed a Namaz-e-Janaza of a woman who was suspected to die of COVID-19 and was buried in Khilgaon-Taltola Graveyard, the graveyard designated for the burials of people who would die of COVID-19. Only three men, including the graveyard’s Imam, took part in her Namaz-e Janaza, wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) (Deepto 2020). This incident gives the viewer a sense of fear of an unusual death ritual. In Bangladesh, death rituals involve a large gathering of friends and relatives and a series of religious events as these are counted as a rite of passage (Ahmed 1989). Death marks a transition from the worldly life to an eternal journey. The family members and relatives participate in the rituals, giving up their regular activities. After a while, they return to a normal life.

The death rituals of the COVID-19-infected people appeared as a lonely journey. COVID-19 patients and their bodies turned into scary objects. Family members refused to touch the dead body or perform rituals for the dead. And, in many cases, family members left the dead body alone. In some areas, inhabitants protested the establishment of COVID-19 hospitals or burials of people who died of COVID-19 in their localities. Khilgaon is an example here. When it was declared that the dead bodies of COVID-19-affected people will be buried in a graveyard in Khilgaon, local people protested (Kamal 2020). People in Tejgaon in Dhaka city protested the establishment of a COVID-19 treatment hospital adjacent to their neighbourhood (New Age 2020). People felt helpless when they realised that there was no immediate relief from the pandemic. The COVID-19-infected people remain as suspects, a pernicious creature.

Conclusion

Drawing on observations, media reports and qualitative interviews, this article explained how Bangladeshi society perceives COVID-19 as a disease along with its symptoms. The earlier findings show that Bangladeshis refer to coronavirus as coronarog. In defining the symptoms of the disease, they use either a personalistic or a naturalistic etiological explanation. Their use of etiology is associated with their social classes, access to social and cultural capital, and geographical locations. The working-class population in both urban and rural areas have poor access to capital, and they rely on a personalistic etiological explanation. However, the urban working class and the rural working class differ from each other in diagnosing the disease. The former defines it as a disease of the rich, while the latter sees it as a disease of the urban areas. They both believe that they will not be infected by the virus, and for that, they do not need to take any precautions.

On the contrary, the rich are aware of the risk of the virus through their access to various social networks and maintain health safety measures. They subscribe to a naturalistic explanation of the disease. However, over time, the spread of the virus across the country and the economic problems like joblessness and the fall in income due to the virus have led to a new understanding of the virus. Everyone tends to accept it as a gojob, which can be eradicated by seeking forgiveness from Allah. However, the wealthy class pursues a dual strategy. On the one hand, they maintain health safety measures, and, on the other, they pray to Allah for rescuing them from the virus. Everyone considers COVID-19 as deadly and synonymous with death.

This study helps the healthcare providers to know about people’s perceptions of the disease and devise strategies accordingly to reach out to the people of different classes. The Bangladeshi healthcare system needs to develop efficient strategies to fight the virus and take care of the patients with its limited resources.