UNB, Dhaka :
Bangladesh recorded 50 more deaths from Covid-19 in 24 hours until Wednesday morning, showing a marked fall in the fatality rate.
With the new death figure, the mortality from the Coronavirus rose to 11,755, according to a handout issued by the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
The number of Covid deaths came down to 50 after over a month as the country saw 50 deaths on April 1 and it had kept rising since then.
Health authorities recorded 1,742 new cases during the period.
The latest figure pushed up the caseload to 7,67,338.
However, the infection rate fell to 8.59 percent from Tuesday’s 8.71 percent while the fatality rate remained static at 1.53 percent.
The body count soared to over 100 during April 16-19 and on April 25 but the daily fatalities have been falling gradually since then.
In the last 24 hours, 427 labs across the country tested 20,284 samples.
Among the recent deaths, 32 were men while 18 were women.
Besides 3,433 patients recovered from Covid-19 during the last 24 hours, putting the recovery rate at 91.02%.
Bangladesh kicked off its vaccination drive on February 7 with Oxford-AstraZeneca 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 doses uncertain.
The administering of the first dose has remained suspended since April 26, and no one in the
country has received the second dose in the last 48 hours.
However, DGHS DG Prof ABM Khurshid Alam assured that Bangladesh will get 2.1 million doses of vaccines by early May.
In the last 24 hours, 38 people have received the first dose and 83,540 have received the second dose of Covid vaccine, a figure which is exactly the same of yesterday, according to the DGHS handout.
So far, a total of 72,48,829 people received vaccines where 31,06709 people managed to complete their second dose.
The DGHS on Wednesday said the stock of the Covid-19 vaccine is running out in Bangladesh as there are only 14 lakh jabs in government hands with no sign in sight to get a fresh consignment of it from India.
Speaking at a virtual press briefing, DGHS spokesperson Dr Robed Amin said, “We had around one crore and two lakh vaccines in our hands…around 88 lakh jabs have already been administered as the first and second doses. Now we’ve some 14 lakh doses in stock.”
He said there will be a vaccine crisis if a fresh consignment does not arrive in the country before the existing stock is exhausted.
Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen on Wednesday said the government has intensified its efforts to have vaccine jabs from the United States (US) as it will share up to 60 million doses of its Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine with other countries.
The government has issued a notification extending the ongoing lockdown until May 16 with six fresh directives alongside the existing ones to contain the spread of Covid-19.
