Bangladesh has crossed 1,500 Covid-19 deaths as 38 more people have died of the infection in the last 24 hours.
With the latest deaths, the number of total coronavirus fatalities in Bangladesh rose to 1,502.
The country has also had more than 115,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus with another 3,480 people having tested positive in the past 24 hours.
With this development, the total number of confirmed cases jumped to 115,786.
Additional Director General (Administration) of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), Prof Nasima Sultana, revealed the latest figures from Dhaka on Monday afternoon, in a daily online bulletin on the Covid-19 situation.
Fatality rate 1.30%
Prof Nasima said, of the 38 deceased -- 33 men and five women – 15 were from Dhaka division, 12 from Chittagong, four from Barisal, two each from Rajshahi, Khulna, and Mymensingh, and one from Sylhet division.
She said one of the deceased was below 10, one between 11 and 20, one between 21 and 30, three between 41 and 50 years of age, 16 between 51 and 60, 10 between 61 and 70, three between 71 and 80, and one over 80 years in age.
Of the victims, 25 died in different hospitals, 12 at home, and one was brought dead to a hospital, she added.
The death toll accounts for 1.30% of the total infected.
On June 16, the country recorded 53 deaths from the deadly Covid-19 infection, the highest number of deaths recorded to date in the country on a single day.
Deaths from the coronavirus infection crossed the 1,000 mark in Bangladesh on June 10 and the country recorded its first fatality on March 18. The country crossed the 100 mark in deaths on April 20.
22.37% test positive in 24hrs
The DGHS official said as many as 16,287 samples were collected between Sunday and Monday.
Of those, 15,555 samples were tested in 62 authorized labs -- government and private -- across the country.
With 3,480 of the tests coming back positive, the detection rate of new patients in the last 24 hours stood at 22.37%, Prof Nasima said.
22.66% of Sunday’s test results came back positive. It reached an all-time high on June 18, with 23.39% of all samples tested that day coming back positive.
On June 18, Covid-19 cases in Bangladesh crossed the grim 100,000 mark since the country detected its first cases back in March.
On June 17, Bangladesh recorded 4,008 new coronavirus cases, the highest in a 24-hour span.
In all, 627,719 tests have been conducted so far, she added.
Recovery rate 40.38%
In the briefing, the DGHS official also said that 1,678 more Covid-19 patients have recovered from the infection in the last 24 hours.
So far, 46,755 people -- 40.38% of all infected -- have made full recovery from the deadly virus.
“618 people have been put in isolation in the past 24 hours and 341 were released. Currently, 12,467 people are in isolation.
“Meanwhile, at the same time, another 2,663 people have been put under home and institutional quarantine, and 1,972 were released. At present, 63,896 people are in quarantine across the country,” she added.
Prof Nasima also said that the rt-PCR lab in Dhaka University, which was closed down on May 27, will resume testing Covid-19 samples soon.
She also requested the general public to be aware of the current situation and suggested they follow the health directives issued by the government.
On March 8, health authorities in Bangladesh reported the first case of Covid-19, a severe acute respiratory illness caused by the new strain of coronavirus, Sars-CoV-2. The virus broke out in China's Wuhan in December 2019 and quickly spread throughout the world, becoming a pandemic in less than three months.
Till now the fast-spreading coronavirus has claimed more than 471,000 lives and infected more than 9,079,000 people globally, according to Worldometer.
As many as 4,861,000 people across the world have recovered from Covid-19, which has spread to 213 countries and territories.
