Covid-19: Bangladesh sees daily infection rate drop below 20% after 8 weeks

Bangladesh reported the single-day test-positivity rate for Covid-19 under 20% on Tuesday - a first in eight weeks.

The health directorate, in its daily Covid update released on Tuesday afternoon, said the nationwide infection rate for the pandemic was 19.18% between 8am Monday and 8am Tuesday.

The last time the single-day infection rate was recorded under 20% was on June 22 (19.36%). During this period, 39,278 samples were tested around the country.

The health authorities also reported 198 fresh fatalities from Covid-19 - a rise after several days of downward trend - and 7,535 new cases of infection in the 24 hours to 8am Tuesday.

With the latest tally, the number of nationwide deaths caused by the pandemic now stands at 24,547, while the caseload has risen to 1,433,396, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).

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During the same period, 12,950 people recovered from the disease, taking the total number of recoveries to nearly 1.315 million.

The mortality rate against the total number of cases detected so far stands at 1.71%.

To date, more than 8.48 million tests have been conducted around the country, leading to an overall test positivity rate of 16.9%.

Dhaka logged 4,335 cases in the 24 hours to 8am Tuesday, the highest among the eight divisions, followed by Chittagong with 1,325 cases, Khulna with 471, Sylhet with 357, and Rajshahi with 333.

Of the 198 deceased, 116 were men and 82 women. So far, 16,149 men (65.79%) and 8,398 women (34.21%) have died from Covid-19 in Bangladesh.

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Dhaka also logged the highest deaths with 72 fatalities, followed by Chittagong with 52.

Khulna division counted 26 deaths while Sylhet division 18, Rajshahi nine, Mymensingh eight, Barisal seven and Rangpur six.

On March 8, 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 disease 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 viral disease has claimed at least 4.3 million lives and infected 208.8 million people across the world till Tuesday afternoon, according to Worldometer.

As many as 187 million people have recovered from Covid-19 which has spread to 220 countries and territories across the planet.