Covid-19 claims 51 lives, infects 1,901 in last 24hrs

Bangladesh again witnessed a spike in death and case positivity of coronavirus as the health authorities logged 51 more deaths and 1,901 new cases in the last 24 hours till Wednesday morning.

The fresh numbers pushed the country’s coronavirus-related death to 27,058 while the caseload mounted to 15,36,341, Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) said in a handout this afternoon.

The daily case positivity rate stood at 6.64 percent up from Tuesday’s 6.54 percent while the World Health Organisation recommends 5 percent for normal situations.

The new cases were detected after testing 28,615 samples at 808 government authorised laboratories in the country during the 24 hours period, the DGHS said.

Meanwhile, some 3,873 people were declared free from the virus at the same time, taking the total number of the recovery to 14,86,668.

The recovery rate rose to 97.02 percent up from Tuesday’s 96.89 percent and Monday’s 96.77 percent while the death rate remained static at 1.76 percent for the last few days.

The country last witnessed the upswing in fatalities reaching its peak on August 5 and 10 when 264 deaths were recorded.

Between May and June this year, there was a 273 percent rise in monthly caseloads and 162 percent in fatalities.

In July, there was a 150 percent increase in caseloads and a 170 percent rise in deaths compared to the previous month, according to the WHO.

Among the new victims, 20 died in Dhaka division, 11 in Chattogram, five each in Khulna and Sylhet divisions, four in Rajshahi, three each in Barishal and Mymensingh while no casualties were reported in Rangpur division during the period.

Of them, 32 were male and 19 were female. The deceased were aged between 11 and 100 years and majority of them were between 51 and 70 years, according to the DGHS daily chart.

Among the victims, 44 breathed their last while undergoing treatment at different public hospitals while seven died at private hospitals in the 24 hours.

Meanwhile, Worldometer, a reference website that provides counters and real-time statistics for diverse topics, has recorded 46, 65, 286 deaths so far caused by the virus and 22, 67, 68, 191 cases worldwide.

Since the outbreak of the virus in China in 2019, the health authority in Bangladesh confirmed the first case on March 8, 2020 and recorded the first death on March 18 in the same year.

Bangladesh to get 24cr Covid jabs by March-April

Earlier in the day, Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen at a programme in Dhaka, sounded hopeful regarding procurement of Covid-19 jabs, saying Bangladesh is on track to get 24 crore vaccines by March-April next year.

“Vaccine doses are coming under the COVAX facility, as gifts and from other sources,” he said, adding that Bangladesh needs 26 crore vaccine doses and some jabs would be produced at home too.

Production of Covid jabs locally to begin soon

During a question-answer session in parliament on Wednesday, Health and Family Welfare Minister Zahid Maleque expressed his optimism over locally producing coronavirus vaccines soon and said the process is underway.

“Our prime minister has instructed us to accelerate the vaccine production process locally and we are working on it. We will begin the vaccine production work very soon,” he said.

Maleque said the government has already injected 2.50 crore doses of coronavirus vaccine of which 1.50 crore people got their second doses.