A year after the first known cases of the Covid -19 were reported in the country, Bangladesh has recorded over half a million infections and nearly 8,500 deaths.
In the 24 hours to Sunday morning, 606 new infections were recorded taking the total caseload to 550,330, according to figures released by the health authorities.
On March 8 last year, the first three cases were detected after the novel coronavirus broke out in China in December 2019, which became a global pandemic in less than three months.
Bangladesh reported its first death on March 18 last year. Since then, 8,462 people have died after 11 fatalities were recorded in the 24 hours to 8am on Sunday.
Less than a year after the pandemic unfolded in the country, Bangladesh kicked off a nationwide vaccination campaign in February 7 this year. As of Sunday, over 3.68 million people have been inoculated.
The daily infection rate stood at 4.30%, up from 4.13% on Saturday.
The overall infection rate, however, fell slightly, to 13.27% – with a total of 4,146,205 tests being conducted across the country till now. The figure was 13.40% on Wednesday.
At the same time, the mortality rate against the total number of cases detected has so far remained steady at 1.54% for the past few days.
The health authorities said that a total of 1,037 people had recovered from the disease over the preceding 24 hours.
So far, 503,003 patients – 91.23% of all infected – have made full recovery across the country.
7-day moving average
The 7-day moving average of daily deaths in Bangladesh has been below 10 for 12 days straight.
As of Sunday, the 7-day moving average of daily deaths in the country stood at 7.28. On February 24, the 7-day moving average went below 10 (9.29), for the first time in months ever since the death toll went up from May. The rolling average on May 12, last year, stood at 9.57 before skyrocketing.
For a 7-day moving average, one has to take the data of the preceding one week, add them up, and divide it by 7. The most common application of a moving average is to identify trend direction.
Global situation
The novel coronavirus 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 coronavirus has claimed more than 2,601,188 lives and infected as many as 117,146,399 people across the world till Sunday afternoon, according to worldometer, a reference website that provides counters and real-time statistics for diverse topics.
As many as 92,714,170 people have recovered from Covid-19, which has affected 219 countries and territories across the planet.