Covid tally surpasses 16 lakh with 2,916 new cases

Bangladesh’s coronavirus tally rose to 16,01,305 as the health authorities registered 2,916 more fresh cases until Wednesday morning, showing an alarming upward trend in infection rate of the virus compared to the previous day.

Meanwhile, the country saw four more deaths of the virus during the 24 hours period, pushing the death toll to 28,111, according to a handout of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).  

The case positivity stood at 11.68 percent, highest in the last four and half months, as the country saw 3,357 cases and 86 deaths with 11.95 infection rate of the virus on August 31 last year.

The mortality rate remained unchanged at 1.76 percent during the period while the recovery rate of the virus further declined to 96.90 percent from Tuesday’s 97.06 percent and Monday’s 97.19 percent.

The new cases were detected after testing 24,964 samples at 852 government authorised laboratories in the country at the same time.

A total of 15,51,653 people have recovered and been discharged from hospitals so far, with 266 new recoveries.

Among the victims, two were male while the other two were female and they were aged between 51 and 100 years. Of them, three breathed their last while undergoing treatment at public hospitals in Dhaka division while the rest one at a private hospital in Chattogram.

Earlier, the health authorities recorded zero Covid-linked death on December 9 after nearly three weeks as the pandemic was apparently showing a downward trend at the time. Bangladesh also saw the zero Covid-linked death on November 20 last year.

Besides, they reported the highest number of daily fatalities of 264 on August 10, when the highest daily caseload was 16,230 on July 28, 2021.

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

Worldometer, a reference website that provides counters and real-time statistics for diverse topics, has so far recorded 55, 23, 614 deaths so far caused by the virus and 31, 43, 35, 790 cases worldwide.