off quickly and there were fewer than 2,000 daily infections a day in May. The third wave had the highest increase in daily cases, hovering around 12,000 registered infections a day in July 2021.

The government introduced various containment measures. It closed schools and educational institutions on March 17, 2020.<sup>8</sup> A first lockdown was imposed from March 26 to May 30, 2020. The authorities declared a ban on passenger travel via water, rail, and domestic air routes from March 24, and all public transport on roads was suspended from March 26, 2020 (Kamruzzaman and Sakib 2020). In response to the second wave, a second lockdown was enacted from April 5 to 13, 2021. In contrast to the first lockdown, factories remained open, and banks operated on a limited scale. Shops and malls re-opened from April 25 amid protests from the shop owners. A third lockdown was imposed for a week, starting on July 1, 2021, and was later extended until July 13, 2021. The restrictions were relaxed for a week from July 14 to allow economic activities centering around Eid-ul-Azha. Finally, the fourth lockdown was imposed from July 23 to August 5.

Despite clear differences in the severity of the containment measures during the four lockdowns, the OxCGRT Stringency Index quantifying the stringency of the containment measures varied only marginally. The average Stringency Index during the first lockdown was 91, and it hovered around 84 during the second. During the third and fourth lockdowns, the average stringency of the containment measures stood at 86 and 92, respectively.

# _7.2 Electricity Consumption in Dhaka during COVID-19_

Data on electricity consumption are available for all eight of the country’s divisions. To analyze the impact of COVID-19, we focus on Dhaka and aggregate the daily data to monthly frequency. To date, Dhaka has seen much higher numbers of infections than other divisions and accounts for nearly half of all deaths caused by COVID-19. Moreover, electricity consumption in Dhaka is clearly linked to economic production and measured more precisely than in other divisions.<sup>9</sup> During the first national lockdown (end of March to May 2020), electricity consumption was substantially lower than predicted by the model. It dropped 40 percent below normal in April and remained 27 percent below normal in May (see figure 7). Relaxation of the containment measures resulted in subsequent recovery of electricity consumption levels. During the ripple starting in November 2020, electricity consumption declined again. It was around 15 percent lower than usual between November 2020 and February 2021. The deviations in April and May 2020, as well as between November 2020 to February 2021, were statistically significant at least at the 5 percent level.

> 8 After 18 months of closure, schools and colleges in Bangladesh were re-opened from mid-September 2021. 9 At 9.6 percent, Dhaka has the smallest average annual standard deviation in daily electricity consumption growth among the divisions, followed closely by Chattogram, at 10.7 percent. The standard deviations are larger for the other divisions, varying from 15.9 percent in Sylhet to 47.9 percent in Rajshahi.

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