Covid deaths hover 200-plus for third day in a row

Bangladesh recorded 12,198 new Covid-19 cases, the second highest single-day jump since the pandemic began,  in the 24 hours between 8am on Monday and 8am on Tuesday. Besides, the infectious disease claimed the lives of 203 people during the same period.

Another 7,646 patients also recovered from Covid-19 across the country, according to the health directorate’s daily press release on the Covid-19 situation. The latest additions took the country’s death toll to 16,842, the total number of cases to 1,047,155 and the number of recoveries to 889,167 since the first cases in Bangladesh were detected in March last year.

Dhaka division reported 61 deaths, the highest among the eight divisions, followed by Khulna with 53 deaths. Thirty patients died in Chittagong division, 27 in Rajshahi, 15 in Rangpur, seven in Mymensingh and five each in Barisal and Sylhet.

As many as 41,755 samples were tested across the country, yielding a positivity rate of 29.21pc. The overall infection rate currently stands at 14.84pc.

Dhaka logged 4,729 cases, the highest among the divisions, followed by Chittagong with 2,343 cases, Khulna with 1,588 and Rajshahi with 1,008.

Of the 203 deceased, 132 were men and 71 were women. Of them, 118 were aged above 60 years, 39 were aged between 51 and 60, 28 were between 41 and 50, 12 were aged between 31 and 40 and six were in the 21-30 age group.

The pandemic has so far claimed the lives of 11,782 men (69.96pc) and 5,060 women (30.04pc). The mortality rate against the total number of cases detected so far stands at 1.61pc.

Vaccination

On Tuesday, 350 people received their second dose of the Oxford-Astrazeneca Covid-19 vaccine, taking the total number of fully vaccinated people to 4,295,568. Meanwhile, a little over 1.5 million people have only received the first dose of the vaccine and are awaiting the second one.

Additionally, another 62,113 people received the first dose of the Sinopharm vaccine, taking the total to 268,253. As many as 2,259 people have received the second dose so far. 

Meanwhile, 7,510 people were administered the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine, taking the total to 29,852.

On March 8, 2020, 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 coronavirus disease 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 4,058,095 lives and infected 188,210,453 people across the world as of Tuesday afternoon, according to Worldometer, a reference website that provides counters and real-time statistics for diverse topics.

As many as 172,100,997 people have recovered from Covid-19, which has affected 222 countries and territories across the planet.