Bangladesh Covid-19 testing rate still among world's lowest

Despite increasing the testing of suspected Covid-19 patients, Bangladesh still holds a poor position in this regard, ranking the 13th lowest across the world.

Its performance as an Asian country is even disappointing as it ranks in the second last position on the list.

According to Worldometers estimate on Thursday, the South Asian nation is currently testing merely 103 samples for every one million people per day. Before the increase in the number of tests per day, it was around 10 samples per million population.

Malawi has the world’s lowest rate of just 18 tests per million people, followed by Papua New Guinea (19) and Nigeria (25). 

Bangladesh’s neighbouring Myanmar is approximately testing 59 people in a million, the lowest rate in Asia and eighth-lowest globally.  

Bangladesh has been witnessing a steady and alarming rise in the curve with a whopping 30-fold increase in new cases in the first 15 days of April.  

The situation of India is not any better as the country has the third-lowest testing rate (199 per million) in South Asia. 

Amid much criticism from different quarters throughout last month, Bangladesh government finally expanded its numbers for testing from early April.

But the increase seems to be way too inadequate when compared to the global standard of Covid-19 sample testing.

Bangladesh yesterday recorded its highest single-day deaths and new cases from Covid-19.

The development took place as the country reported 10 new deaths and 341 new infections.

The fresh cases were detected after testing 2,019 out of 2,135 samples in 17 labs across the country. 

The country tested no less than of 16,887 samples till Thursday morning, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).