Staff Reporter :
Bangladesh saw a big jump in the coronavirus cases as 564 more people tested positive for the virus in the last 24 hours till Thursday, taking the total number of infected people to 7,667.
Besides, the death toll from the virus in the country stands at 168 with five more deaths from the virus infection during the period.
Prof Dr Nasima Sultana, Additional Director General of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), came up with the disclosure in the daily online health bulletin at the Management Information System (MIS) in the afternoon.
Twenty-nine PCR labs collected 5,626 samples and tested 4,965 of them across the country, she said.
Of the dead, three were male and two were female, Dr Nasima said adding, “Two of them were aged above 60 and the rest were aged between 41 and 50. For the first time a senior journalist and a policeman have died in the country from the virus. We pray for the departed souls of those all,” said Dr Nasima.
She said 10 new patients recovered from the disease and a large portion of infected patients are receiving treatment at hospitals in the capital.
“In the last 24 hours, 95 people took admission to hospitals across Dhaka city. So far, 1,731 patients have received treatment from hospitals in the capital,” said Dr Nasima.
In the past 24 hours, 138 people have been taken to isolation while 2,182 home and institutionally quarantined.
Dr Nasima added that the country has over one lakh testing kits in stock.
“We’re in the process of buying more kits. No country is selling huge amount of kits at the moment. The crisis of kits is everywhere,” she said.
“At present, we have more than 100,000 Covid-19 test kits in stock, which are being supplied to the different labs conducting tests,” Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) Additional Director General (Administration) Prof Nasima Sultana told The New Nation on Thursday afternoon.
Claiming that the process to import more kits is underway, she said: “We now can procure a maximum cache of 40,000 kits, since their demand has skyrocketed across the world.”
The DGHS official further said that health authorities collect the swab sticks used for collecting samples locally and orders are already in place for more of those.
On April 11, the Health Ministry confirmed in a press release that Bangladesh had collected total 92,000 PCR test kits amid the coronavirus pandemic. According to government figures, as of April 25, of all the kits collected, 21,000 were distributed in different labs and the rest were kept in stock.
However, since then the Health Ministry stopped providing any information about the number of test kits in hand in their daily Covid-19 briefing.
Meanwhile, DGHS’s Sultana told The New Nation that they are expecting to receive more 100,000 PCR test kits on Friday.
As of Thursday, Bangladesh confirmed 7,667 coronavirus cases with the death toll rising to 168 after five new fatalities were reported.
The fast spreading Covid-19 has so far killed 228,000 people in more than 200 countries and territories.
