Death toll from Covid-19 crosses 19,000 mark

As the Delta variant induced second wave of coronavirus jeopardised Bangladesh’s health service, the country saw 195 more deaths and 6,780 new cases from the virus in the last 24 hours until Saturday morning.

The fresh causality took the death toll of the virus to 19,046 with 1.65 percent death rate which was 1.64 percent on Friday and 1.63 percent of Thursday.

Besides, the new cases pushed up the caseload to 11,53,344 with 32.55 percent positivity rate which was 31.05 percent on Friday and 30.48 percent on Thursday.

The new cases were detected after testing 20,827 samples at 639 government authorised laboratories in the country in the same period, according to a handout of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).

With Delta variant spreading rapidly, the country’s fatalities has been hovering at nearly 200 for the last two weeks.

It reported the highest daily Covid-19 fatality number – 231 – on July 19 and 13,768 cases on the 12th of the month.

There have been a total of 1,146,564 infections and 18,851 coronavirus-related deaths till Friday since its outbreak in Bangladesh.

A total of 9.723 patients were declared free from the infection, taking the total number of recovery to 9, 88,339 with 84.69 percent recovery rate.

Just like the last few days, Dhaka division saw the highest deaths as 68 more people died with the fatal disease during this time, followed by 41 deaths in Khulna, 36 in Chattogram, 18 in Rajshahi, 16 in Rangpur, 10 in Mymensingh, five in Barishal and one in Sylhet divisions.

Of the deceased, 103 were male while 92 were female and the victims were aged between 10 and 100 and above.

Of them, 159 died at public hospitals, 31 at private hospitals and five at houses in the same period.

Meanwhile, Worldometer, a reference website that provides counters and real-time statistics for diverse topics, has recorded 41, 63, 309 deaths so far caused by the virus and 19, 41, 95, 824 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.

Vaccination update

The government has so far approved the emergency use of Oxford-AstraZeneca, Sinopharm (China), Sputnik-V (Russia), Pfizer-BioNTech (USA/Germany), Crona Vac (China) and Janssen single-dose vaccines.

Amid the deteriorating coronavirus situation, the government resumed the countrywide mass registration on July 8 for receiving Covid-19 jabs, which remained suspended for around three months as vaccine procurement became unsure.

Bangladesh is currently administering the doses of Sinopharm vaccine and Pfizer BioNTech vaccine and also the second dose of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

Earlier in the day, Dr ABM Khurshid Alam, director general of the DGHS, told the Business Insider Bangladesh that the vaccination centres will remain closed for four days because of Eid holiday to begin from July 20 to 22 in Bangladesh.

Apart from, July 23 is Friday and the day is considered as weekly holiday and thus the vaccine centre will also remain stopped on that day, he added.

The vaccination activities will again be resumed on Saturday though the next course of strict lockdown to begin from the same day across the country simultaneously.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh received a total of 2,45,200 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine from Japan on Saturday.

14-day lockdown enters second day

Bangladesh went into nationwide strict lockdown for 14 days from Friday in a bid to contain the spread of Covid-19.

The restrictions come into force at 8:00am on July 23 and will continue till August 5 midnight, unless it extends again.

Earlier, the government has relaxed the lockdown restrictions for eight days from July 15 on the occasion of the Eid-ul-Azha, the second largest religious festival of Muslims.