Bangladesh, India and Pakistan are all among the top ten countries with the most new cases of Covid-19, while some of the countries that have so far been among the worst affected appear to be bringing the pandemic under a semblance of control.
If the surge in new cases does not slow down in the three South Asian neighbours, they may soon find themselves among the worst affected over all.
According to data from Worldometer, Bangladesh recorded the fifth highest number of new cases on Tuesday with 3,171. Pakistan and India were in second and third place with 4,646 and 3,969, respectively.
Russia topped the list of new cases with 8,595, while Saudia Arabia was in fourth place with 3,288. Worst hit USA was seventh with 2,643 new cases.
On the other hand, Italy and Spain, two countries who were the worst affected towards the beginning of the pandemic, registered no new cases on Tuesday. China, where the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus originated, recorded just three new cases.
According to data from the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), the 3,171 new cases in Bangladesh took the total number of confirmed cases in the country to 71,675 – the 20th highest in the world.
India is in sixth position with a total of 269,897 confirmed cases, while Pakistan is in 16th place with 108,317.
The country also saw the highest single day death toll of 45, taking its overall death toll from Covid-19 to 975.
The surging number of Covid-19 cases in Bangladesh comes in the wake of the government easing a two-month-long lockdown on June 1. The government is in the process of implementing a new zonal lockdown strategy.
The government has also steadily ramped up testing, with over 3,000 new positive cases coming from the testing of 14,664 samples on Tuesday. This amounts to a mammoth infection rate of 21.62%.
Tuesday marked the fifth consecutive day that the infection rate in Bangladesh stayed above 20%.