Bangladesh’s coronavirus situation continues to worsen as the daily caseload hit a new high again on Thursday with the government ordering local administrations across the country to ramp up oxygen supply and increase hospital capacity.
The health authorities reported 11,651 new infections in the 24 hours to Thursday morning, surpassing the previous peak of 11,525 on Tuesday. The total caseload now stands at 989,219.
Dhaka logged 4,949 cases, the highest among eight the divisions followed by Chittagong with 1,936, Khulna with 1,732 cases, and Rajshahi with 1,048.
Another 199 fatalities were reported during the same time, taking the toll to 15,792 in the country.
Dhaka saw the most death with 65 fatalities followed by Khulna with 55 deaths.
Chittagong division counted 37 deaths while Rajshahi 15, Mymensingh 10, Rangpur nine, Sylhet five, and Barisal three.
As many as 36,850 samples were tested across the country for a positivity rate of 31.62%.
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The mortality rate against the total number of cases detected so far stands at 1.6%.
The overall test positivity rate stands at 14.41%.
Another 5,844 patients recovered from the infectious disease across the country, taking the total number of recovery to 856,346.
Vaccination
On Thursday, eight people received first dose of Oxford-Astrazeneca vaccine, taking the total number to 5,820,023 while 651 others received the second dose, taking the total number to 4,293,832.
The first dose of the Sinopharm shots were administered to 8,692 people, taking the total to 103,887. As many as 2,237 people received second dose of the vaccine till Thursday.
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Meanwhile, 1,752 people were administered with the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine, taking the total to 6,762.
Bangladesh reported its first Covid-19 cases in March last year. So far, five variants of the virus have been detected in Bangladesh including the Indian variant (B.1.617.2) or Delta being the latest. It was later renamed as the Delta variant.
The rest of the variants identified in the country are the UK (B.1.1.7), South Africa (B.1.351), Nigeria (B.1.525) and Brazilian (P1) variants of the coronavirus.
The fast spreading coronavirus has claimed more than four million lives and infected nearly 186 million people across the world as of Thursday afternoon, according to Worldometer.
As many as 170,181,000 people have recovered from Covid-19 which has spread to 220 countries and territories across the planet.