Daily deaths hit record high of 119 as Covid engulfs Bangladesh

Bangladesh has recorded its highest daily coronavirus death toll since the pandemic began — a day after the government announced an all-out lockdown from July 1 to check the spread of the virus.

On Sunday, the health authorities reported 119 deaths, taking the total death toll from the disease to 14,172.

The new record surpassed the previous high of 112 on April 19 this year.

The newest hotspot Khulna reported 32 deaths, the highest among the eight divisions, followed by Dhaka with 24 deaths. Chittagong and Rajshahi divisions counted 22 deaths each while Rangpur 9, Sylhet 5, Mymensingh, 3 and Barisal 2.  

Another 5,268 people tested positive in the 24 hours to Sunday morning, taking the tally to 888,406.

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Dhaka logged 1,648 Covid positive cases, the highest among the divisions followed Khulna with 1,202 cases and Rajshahi with 962, according to the latest figures by the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).

As many as 24,400 samples were tested across the country, for a positivity rate of 21.59%. 

On the other hand, another 3,249 patients recovered from the infectious disease across the country, taking the total number of recovery to 804,103.

The pandemic has, so far, claimed the lives of 10,118 men (71.39%) and 4,054 women (28.61%). 

The mortality rate against the total number of cases detected so far stands at 1.6%.

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In the 24 hours to Sunday, 2,066 people received their second dose of Oxford-Astrazeneca vaccine, taking the total number of people receiving the second jabs to 4,283,842. Meanwhile, a total of 5,820,015 people received the first dose of the vaccine.

Additionally, 6,784 people received their first dose of the Sinopharm vaccine over the same period, taking the total to 39,472 till now while 50 people received second dose of the vaccine in 24 hours, taking the total to 418 till Sunday. As many as 240 people received their first dose of the Pfizer vaccine till now.

The health authorities in Bangladesh in March 8, 2020 reported the first three cases of Covid-19, a severe acute respiratory illness caused by a new coronavirus strain which was later named Sars-CoV-2.

Since November last year, five variants of the virus have been detected in Bangladesh including the Indian variant (B.1.617.2) being the latest. It was later renamed as the Delta variant.

The rest of the variants identified in the country are the UK (B.1.1.7), South Africa (B.1.351), Nigeria (B.1.525) and Brazilian (P1) variants of the coronavirus.

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 3,934,000 lives and infected as many as 181,640,000 people across the world till Sunday afternoon, according to Worldometer.

As many as 166,150,000 people have recovered from Covid-19 which has spread to 220 countries and territories across the planet.