Staff Reporter :
Bangladesh recorded no daily deaths from Covid-19 for the first time in nearly 20 months on Saturday.
The country logged the first fatalities from coronavirus on March 18, 2020. Since then, the health authorities had reported multiple deaths every day, with its peak on August 10 with 264 fatalities.
But health authorities reported no deaths from Covid-19 in 24 hours (between 8am Friday and 8am Saturday) for the first time since April 3, 2020.
The latest data released by the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) on Saturday afternoon left the death toll static at 27,946.
But the caseload rose to 1,573,889 as 178 people tested positive for the disease in the 24 hours to 8 am on Saturday, according to the latest government data.
Dhaka recorded the most cases among the eight divisions, logging 142 infections.
Nationwide, another 190 people recovered from the illness, bringing the total number of recoveries to 1,538,006.
As many as 15,107 samples were tested across the country, for a positivity rate of 1.18 per cent. The latest figures put the recovery rate at 97.72 per cent and the mortality rate at 1.78 per cent.
Bangladesh reported its first three cases of Covid-19, a severe acute respiratory illness caused by a strain of coronavirus later named Sars-CoV-2, on March 8, 2020. The first death was reported 10 days later.
The country, however, has been witnessing infection rates below or around 2 per cent for the past few weeks. The country last recorded an infection rate of over 3 per cent on October 4 when the figure stood at 3.19 per cent.
On November 1, the government started administering doses of Pfizer vaccine to school students aged 12-17.
A large number of the population has also been vaccinated with the government expecting more vaccine doses by the end of this month from multiple sources.
Globally, over 256.78 million people have been infected by the novel coronavirus and 5.14 million have died, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.
Expelled Gazipur City Corporation (GCC) mayor Mohammad Jahangir Alam burst into tears while addressing a press conference at his residence in Gazipur City on Saturday morning over his expulsion from the party.
