For the first time since April 14 when the country’s death toll surpassed the total number of recovery, the latter has gone past the tally of Covid-19 fatalities for a relieving change.
In the past 24 hours as of Friday afternoon, some 14 people have recovered from Covid-19, taking the tally to 174. Over the same period the death toll jumped to 170, with two new deaths.
Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) Additional Director General (Administration) Prof Dr Nasima Sultana revealed the latest figures in a daily online bulletin on Covid-19 situation from Dhaka on Friday afternoon.
On April 14, the number of recovered patients was 42 against the death toll of 46. Over the last 17 days, the recovery count had been chasing the death toll.
The new recoveries, as announced on Friday, is the second single-day highest, following April 23’s highest count of 16.
Also, Friday’s recovery tally spiked by 24.57% as compared to that of the previous day (10).
On Friday, Bangladesh crossed the mark of 8,000 coronavirus cases as 571 more people tested positive for Covid-19 in the last 24 hours.
With the latest figures, the number of confirmed cases jumped to 8,238.
The country, however, witnessed a fall in death figures as two people have died of the disease during the same period, taking the number of fatalities to 170 in the country.
Bangladesh reported its first three Covid-19 cases on March 8 and two recoveries three days later. The country’s very first casualty from the novel coronavirus was recorded on March 18.
10% of the total infected “fit”, have no symptoms
Around 800 of the infected are doing fine and they did not show any symptoms of coronavirus, said the DGHS official.
“They are either hospitalised or at home,” she said, before adding that most of them were awaiting a repeat test since many tested negative for Covid-19 in the first test.
“Even many of them did not have their samples tested yet,” Dr Nasima further said.
Lowest recovery rate in South Asia in first 53 days
Dhaka Tribune estimated that Bangladesh recorded the lowest recovery rate, for the duration of 53 days into the first detection of a coronavirus positive case in the country, compared to eight other nations in South Asia.
Bangladesh confirmed a total of 7,103 positive cases as of April 29, having only 150 cases of recovery.
On April 28, the rate of recovered patients compared to the number of infected was at 2.15%.
The percentage continues to fall significantly almost every day with 2.21%, 2.25%, 2.26%, 2.39% and 2.58% recorded on previous days respectively.
The data was compiled from World Health Organization, respective health ministries, and reputed media outlets of eight South Asian nations.