Daily Covid-19 deaths in Bangladesh reach record high for a second day

Bangladesh has reported 78 Covid-19 deaths in the last 24 hours, the highest daily figure since the outbreak of the disease in the country.

With the latest deaths, the number of total fatalities has risen to 9,739 as of Sunday morning.

On March 5, 2021, the 7-day moving average of deaths in Bangladesh was 6.57 — the lowest since May 2020.

Fewer than 40 days have passed since March 5 and on Sunday, the 7-day rolling average stood at 67.57 — the highest since the pandemic began.

Besides, the country has logged more than 684,000 Covid-19 cases with 5,819 people testing positive in the 24-hour period.

With the fresh infections, the number of total confirmed cases jumped to 684,756, according to the daily virus update released on Sunday afternoon by the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).

Of the 78 deceased, including 53 men and 25 women, 47 were from Dhaka Division, 20 from Chittagong, four each from Rajshahi and Khulna, two from Sylhet and one from Rangpur. 

Seventy-seven of them died at different hospitals across the country while one died at home.

So far, 7,279 men (74.74%) and 2,460 women (25.26%) have died of Covid-19 in the country.

The mortality rate against the total number of cases detected so far stands at 1.42%.

As many as 29,376 samples were tested in 248 labs across the country in the past 24 hours. The latest figures show an infection rate of 19.81%.

A total of 5,002,865 samples have been tested in the country, leading to an overall infection rate of 13.69% so far.

Against the backdrop of a resurgence of Covid-19 deaths and cases, Bangladesh is set to go into a weeklong hard lockdown starting from April 14 in a bid to curb Covid-19 transmissions, since the existing lockdown has proven to be ineffective in restricting public movement.

The DGHS said 4,212 people had recovered from the infectious disease over the preceding 24 hours.

So far, 576,590 patients – 84.2% – have made recovery across the country.

On March 8 last year, the health authorities in Bangladesh reported the first three cases of Covid-19, a severe acute respiratory illness caused by a new coronavirus strain named Sars-CoV-2. The country recorded its first Covid-19 death on March 18.

Global situation

The novel coronavirus broke out in China's Wuhan city in late December 2019 and quickly spread throughout the world, becoming a pandemic in less than three months.

The fast-spreading coronavirus has claimed more than 2,941,268 lives and infected at least 136,130,043 people across the world till Sunday afternoon, according to Worldometer.

As many as 109,514,977 people have recovered from Covid-19, which has affected 221 countries and territories across the planet.