Covid-19 claims 26 lives, lowest in 116 days

Covid-19 claimed 26 more lives and infected 1,555 people in the last 24 hours till Monday morning, said the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).

Bangladesh last witnessed 22 deaths and 1,292 fresh cases of the coronavirus on May 27 this year.

The latest official data took the country’s total Covid-related death to 27,251 while the caseload mounted to 15,44,238, the DGHS said in a press release this evening.

The case positivity rate stood at 5.67 percent in the same period while the World Health Organisation recommends a 5 percent infection rate for normal situation.

The health authorities last recorded 5.13 percent daily case positivity rate of the virus on March 9 this year.

The latest cases were detected after testing 27,431 samples at 810 government authorised laboratories in the country during the 24 hours.

Some 1,565 people were declared free from the infection taking the total number of recovery to 15,03,106 with the recovery rate continuing to increase by reaching 97.34 percent from Sunday’s 97.33 percent.

Meanwhile, the fatality rate remained static at 1.76 percent for a few weeks, said the DGHS.

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, 15 died in Dhaka division, five in Chattogram and two in Khulna division and one person died each in Sylhet, Barishal, Rangpur and Mymensingh divisions while no casualty was reported in Rajshahi division during the period.

Of them, 16 male and 15 were female and the deceased were aged between 31 and 90 years, according to the DGHS daily chart.

Among the victims, 23 breathed their last while undergoing treatment at different public hospitals while three died at different private hospitals in the 24 hours.

Meanwhile, Worldometer, a reference website that provides counters and real-time statistics for diverse topics, has recorded 47, 07, 336 deaths so far caused by the virus and 22, 93, 82, 253 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.