UNB, Dhaka :
After a slight fall for several days, Bangladesh’s daily coronavirus death toll crossed the 100-mark again on Sunday with a sharp fall in new cases.
Fatalities climbed to 11,053 with 101 deaths in the past 24 hours until the morning. The virus also infected 2,922 people, the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) said in a handout.
The daily infection rate rose to 13.33 percent from Saturday’s 13.11 percent while the mortality rate remained static at 1.48 percent.
Bangladesh has so far confirmed 745,322 coronavirus cases.
Between April 16 and 19, the country recorded over 100 deaths, breaking all previous records. The country registered 91, 95 and 98 Covid-related deaths on April 20, 21 and 22 respectively.
On April 23 ad 24, the number fell to 88 and 83. Bangladesh has so far tested 5,345,501 samples, including 21,922 in the last 24 hours.
The number of recoveries is now 657,452, including 4,301 new cases. This means, 88.21 percent of the patients have recovered.Bangladesh reported its first coronavirus cases on March 8 last year and the first death on the 18th of that month In the first 25 days of April, the country saw 2,007 deaths and 130,545 new cases. The virus claimed 568 lives in January this year, 281 in February and 638 in March.
Dhaka division remains the worst-hit region, registering most of the deaths – 6,451 or 58.36 percent. Fifty-four of the 101 deaths reported today are from Dhaka division and 23 from Chattogram division.
One each died in Rajshahi, Mymensingh, two in Rangpur, five in Khulna, seven in Barishal and eight in Sylhet divisions.
Of 1,068 ICU beds across the country, 355 are now available.
Meanwhile, 7,231 general hospital beds, out of 12,271, are unoccupied right now.
The surge in Covid infections prompted the government to go for a lockdown from early April but it failed to achieve the intended result. From April 11, the government imposed a ‘stricter lockdown’ and later extended it up to April 28.
But shops and shopping malls have been reopened from today and the transport minister hinted at resuming public transport soon.
Bangladesh launched a vaccination drive on February 7 with Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine doses it purchased from the Serum Institute of India Pvt Ltd.
Bangladesh signed an agreement with Serum for 30 million doses. But a record number of cases in India has made the delivery of the vaccine doses uncertain.
The administering of first dose will remain suspended from April 26, DGHS said today.
DGHS DG Prof ABM Khurshid Alam assured that Bangladesh will get 2.1 million doses of vaccine by the first week of May.
So far, 5,798,880 people have received the first dose and 2,155,296 have got their second jab, according to official figures.
