Covid-19: Bangladesh reports 30 deaths, 1,970 new cases

Amid the growing concern over the spread of Delta variant, 30 more people died of Covid-19 in Bangladesh in the past 24 hours until Monday morning, putting the death toll at 12,869.

Besides, 1,970 more people found positive for the virus after testing 17,169 samples during the period, Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) came up with the disclosure this afternoon.

The new infections pushed up the total caseload to 8,12, 960, while the positivity rate went up to 11.47 percent from Sunday’s 10.73 percent and Saturday’s 11.03 percent and the mortality rate remained static at 1.58 percent, said the DGHS.

Some 1,918 people were declared free from the virus taking the total number of recovery to 7,53, 240 with recovery rate 92.65 percent.

Of the deceased, 19 were male and 11 were female today.

Chattogram saw the highest fatality rate during the period with death of 11 people, while Dhaka witnessed seven deaths, Sylhet four, Khulna three, Rajshahi and Mymensingh two each and Rangpur division saw one death.

Meanwhile, Worldometer, a reference website that provides counters and real-time statistics for diverse topics, has recorded 37, 44, 667 deaths so far caused by the virus and 17, 40, 76, 914 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 caused by the virus on March 18 in the same year.

Vaccination drive

Bangladesh launched its vaccination drive on February 7 with Oxford-AstraZeneca doses purchased from India’s Serum Institute.

The administration of the first dose remained suspended since April 26.

The country, the prime recipient of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines, has also suspended the registration for Covid-19 jabs due to vaccine shortage amid a delay in the arrival of shipments from India.

However, the administering of the 1st dose of Chinese Sinopharm vaccine against Covid-19 began in Bangladesh on May 25.

So far, four vaccines – Oxford-AstraZeneca (Covishield), Sputnik-V, Sinopharm and Pfizer-BioNTech – have got emergency use authorisation in the country.

Seven million doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca Covishield vaccine reached Bangladesh, and the governments of India and China gave 3.2 million doses and 500,000 doses of coronavirus vaccine as gifts.

However, the country, the prime recipient of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines, has suspended the registration for Covid-19 jabs due to vaccine shortage amid a delay in the arrival of shipments from India.

Meanwhile, Hualong Yan, minister counselor deputy chief of Mission Embassy of China in Bangladesh wrote on his Facebook page on Saturday that his country is ready to send 600,000 doses of vaccine to Bangladesh as gift by June 13.

In another development, Bangladesh Ambassador to USA M Shahidul Islam, in a tweet message on Saturday said that the first USAID consignment of Covid-19 response relief is on the way to Bangladesh.

He wrote, he visited Travis Air Base to see off the consignment which will greatly strengthen Bangladesh’s capacity to fight against Covid-19 pandemic.