The death toll from Covid-19 has surpassed 14,000 in Bangladesh as the coronavirus situation in the country continued to worsen.
Health authorities reported 77 new deaths in the 24 hours to Saturday morning, taking the toll so far to 14,053.
It took only 15 days for the toll to rise by 1,000 amid the surge in infections that prompted the government to enforce a hard lockdown from Monday.
Also Read - Bangladesh to go into nationwide hard lockdown from Monday
The total caseload reached 883,138 as 4,334 new infections were reported in the 24 hours to Saturday morning.
Dhaka reported 1,921 cases, the most among the eight divisions, followed by Khulna with 848 and Chittagong with 654.
Rajshahi division counted 362 new infections while Rangpur 275, Sylhet 122, Mymensingh 78 and 74.
As many as 19,262 samples were tested across the country with a positivity rate of 22.5%, up from a little over 21% the previous day.
As many as 6,482,381 samples have been tested since the pandemic started, with an overall infection rate of 13.62%.
Meanwhile, another 3,295 patients recovered from the infectious disease in the 24 hours between 8am on Friday and 8am on Saturday, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
Of the 77 deaths tallied on Saturday, 48 were men and 29 were women. Of them, 20 died in Chittagong, 19 in Khulna, 17 in Dhaka, nine in Rajshahi, four each in Rangpur and Sylhet, three in Mymensingh and one in Barisal.
Of the 77 fatalities reported on Saturday, 48 were males and 29 females.
The pandemic has so far claimed the lives of 10,043 males (71.47%) and 4,010 females (28.53%) in Bangladesh.
The mortality rate against the total number of cases detected currently stands at 1.59%.
In March last year, the health authorities in Bangladesh reported the first cases of Covid-19, a severe acute respiratory illness caused by a new coronavirus strain which was later named Sars-CoV-2.
The novel coronavirus broke out in China's Wuhan city in late December 2019 and quickly spread throughout the world, turning into a pandemic in less than three months.
The fast-spreading coronavirus has claimed 3,927,015 lives and infected 181,262,369 people across the world till Saturday afternoon, according to Worldometer, a reference website that provides counters and real-time statistics for diverse topics.
As many as 165,840,107 people have recovered from Covid-19, which has affected 222 countries and territories across the planet.
