Covid-19: 25 deaths, 1,212 new cases registered in Bangladesh

Bangladesh saw a slight spike in death and infection of coronavirus, as the health authorities counted 25 more deaths and 1,212 new cases of the virus in the last 24 hours till Monday morning.

The updated official figures took the death toll caused by the virus to 27,439 while the caseload to 15,52,563, the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) said in a press release this evening.

The daily positivity rate of the virus stood at 4.36 percent recovery rate at 97.43 percent and the death rate remained static at 1.77 percent for few days.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that the daily case positivity rate should remain at 5 percent or below for 14 days before mass unlocking.

Bangladesh reported 21 death and 980 new cases in 24 hours till Sunday morning which was the lowest number of deaths since May 26 when the country reported 17 single-day Covid deaths.

On Saturday, after more than four months, the country saw below 1,000 single-day cases, reporting 818 coronavirus cases in the 24 hour period.

The latest cases were detected after testing 27,787 samples at 821 government authorised laboratories in the country during the same period, the DGHS said.

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.

Some 1,202 people were declared free from the infection taking the total number of recovery to 15,12,681, according to the DGHS.

Among the new victims, nine died in Dhaka division, eight in Chattogram, three each in Khulna and Sylhet divisions, two in Rangpur while no casualty was reported in Rajshahi, Barishal and Mymensingh divisions during the period.

Of them, 13 male and 12 were female and the deceased were aged between 21 and 90 years and majority of them were between 51 and 90 years, according to the DGHS daily chart.

Among the victims, 20 breathed their last while undergoing treatment at different public hospitals, five 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, 63, 831 deaths so far caused by the virus and 23, 26, 82, 376 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.

Vaccine update

Bangladesh will receive 25 lakh more doses of Pfizer vaccine under COVAX facility in the early hours of Tuesday.

With the vaccine doses, a cargo flight of National Airlines is scheduled to land at the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport from the US state of Florida at 1:30am.

Bangladesh received some 100,620 doses of vaccine in the first phase and 10,03,860 doses in the second phase under the COVAX facility programme.

With the latest 25 lakh, Bangladesh's total count of Pfizer vaccine will be 360,4,480 doses under the COVAX facility programme, according to the press release.

On September 18, Bangladesh received some 50 lakh doses of the Sinopharm vaccine. Besides, 54 lakh doses of the Chinese Covid vaccine arrived in Bangladesh on September 11.

At present, around 1.50 crore doses of vaccine are in the government’s stock and with the doses, the government is going to vaccinate around 75 lakh people in a single day on Tuesday marking the 75th birth anniversary of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.