Bangladesh on Tuesday saw the daily percentage of people testing positive for Covid-19 go up over 5% after a month of a downtrend.
The country registered 912 new cases in the last 24 hours till Tuesday morning -- the highest daily count in nearly two months.
In the same period, 13 more deaths were recorded around the country, taking the total death toll to 8,489.
On the other hand, the total number of cases stood at 552,087, according to a daily press release issued by the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
It was on January 10, when DGHS recorded a higher single-day caseload of 1,071.
Since then, the number of daily cases remained below the 900 mark until Tuesday.
With the number of people testing positive going up, the daily test positivity rate has also risen to 5.13%.
The last time it was over 5% was on January 18. After that, following a downward trend, it had even dropped to below 3%.
However, the month of March is seeing an upward trend of rising cases day by day. On March 1, 585 new Covid-19 cases were recorded, after almost a month of a lower rate of infections, and on Monday, 845 cases were detected.
Testing up
The number of tests also increased in the last 24 hours till Tuesday morning – 17,775. On Monday, 16,958 tests were conducted.
To date, from March last year, 4,180,938 tests have been conducted in the country, leading to an overall test positivity rate of 13.20%.
Meanwhile, 1,229 Covid-19 patients recovered in the last 24 hours, bringing the total recovery count to 505,349 -- 91.53% of total cases.
Mortality rate
So far, 6,420 male Covid-19 patients (75.63% of the total) and 2,069 female patients (24.37%) have died in Bangladesh.
The mortality rate against the total number of cases currently stands at 1.54%.
Of the 13 new deceased, all men, 10 were from the Dhaka division, and one each from Barisal, Rangpur, and Chittagong divisions.
All of them died while undergoing treatment at different hospitals.
Vaccination efforts
Until Tuesday afternoon, over 5.25 million people had registered around the country to get the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, according to DGHS.
Until the same time, more than 4.01 million people were vaccinated nationwide, since January 27 - when the pilot vaccination program started.
The nationwide vaccination campaign had started on February 7.
Looking back
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 virus has claimed more than 2,613,900 lives and infected over 117,850,200 people across the world till Tuesday evening, according to worldometer, a reference website that provides real-time data on diverse topics.
At the same time, more than 93,519,500 people also recovered from the disease.
On March 8, health authorities in Bangladesh had 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.
Bangladesh acquired 30 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine developed by Oxford University and Swedish-British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca and manufactured by the Serum Institute of India (SII) -- who will deliver it in instalments.
So far, Bangladesh has received two consignments of the vaccine from the SII.
The government is planning to purchase 30 more million doses of the vaccine from the Indian vaccine manufacturer, according to health officials.
Bangladesh is also set to receive another 10.9 million doses under the Covax scheme - co-led by the World Health Organization, the Gavi vaccine alliance, and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations - before June.