Bangladesh sees a spike in Covid-19 infection rate

Bangladesh is witnessing an increase in Covid-19 infection rate for the past few days.

In the 24 hours to Friday morning, a total of 635 new cases were reported, up from 619 on Thursday and 614 the previous day.

The daily infection rate shot up to over 4.5% after remaining below 4% for three consecutive days.

On Friday, it stood at 4.63%, up from 3.87% on Thursday, while it was 3.74% on Wednesday, 3.36% on Tuesday, and 4.31% on Monday.

The recent increase in infection rate clearly shows an upward trend as before Monday it went above the 4% mark on January 25.

With the latest development the total cases in the country now stands at 549,184, according to the daily Covid-19 bulletin by the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).

The overall infection rate of the country is at 13.33%.

Bangladesh also registered six deaths in the 24 hours, taking the total death toll to 8,441.

All the six patients, including two females, died in hospitals. One of the deceased was from the 21-30 age group, another from the 51-60 age group and the rest were above 60. 

As of Friday, the 7-day moving average of daily deaths in the country stood at 6.57. On February 24, the 7-day moving average went below 10 (9.29), for the first time in months ever since death toll went up from May. The rolling average on May 12, last year, stood at 9.57 before skyrocketing.

The mortality rate against the total number of cases detected so far still stands at 1.54%.

As many as 13,710 samples, including the pending ones, were tested in the 219 authorized labs — government and private — across the country.

The health authorities said 676 people recovered from the disease over the preceding 24 hours.

So far, 501,144 patients – 91.25% of all infected – have made full recovery across the country.

On March 8, the health authorities in Bangladesh 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.

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

The fast-spreading coronavirus has claimed more than 2,583,000 lives and infected as many as 116,322,000 people across the world till Thursday afternoon, according to worldometer, a reference website that provides counters and real-time statistics for diverse topics.

As many as 91,972,000 people have recovered from Covid-19 which has affected 219 countries and territories across the planet.