Amid fears of a new Covid-19 wave gaining ground, Bangladesh has recorded 26 new deaths in the 24 hours to Saturday morning, taking the tally of fatalities to 8,668.
On Friday, 18 deaths were reported, up from 16 the previous day.
Daily infections, however, slightly fell to 1,868, according to figures released by the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
Another 1,577 patients recovered from Covid-19 through treatment at home and in hospital care, bringing the total recovery count to 520,718.
Of the 26 deceased — 19 men and seven women — 16 were from Dhaka division, four from Chittagong, and one each from Khulna and Rajshahi.
All of them died while undergoing treatment at different hospitals across the country.
So far, 6,551 men (75.58%) and 2,117 women (24.42%) have died of Covid-19 across the country.
The mortality rate against the total number of cases detected currently stands at 1.52%.
The DGHS said 19,929 samples were collected from suspected Covid-19 patients in the 24-hour time frame.
As many as 19,900 samples, including some pending ones, were tested at the 219 authorized labs — government and private — across the country.
The latest figures showed a test positivity rate of 9.39%.
To date, 4,388,011 tests have been conducted in the country, leading to an overall test positivity rate of 12.96%.
Up to this point, 520,718 patients — 91.56% of all infected — have recovered from Covid-19 across the country.
On March 8, 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 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 Friday, a whopping 1,899 cases were detected.
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 2,715,000 lives and infected as many as 123,018,000 people across the world till Saturday afternoon, according to worldometer, a reference website that provides counters and real-time statistics for diverse topics.
As many as 99,145,000 people have recovered from Covid-19 which has affected 219 countries and territories across the planet.