South Korea has provided 95,000 Covid-19 rapid test kits to Bangladesh as part of its humanitarian assistance efforts.
The consignment from SD BioSensor, a leading test kit manufacturer in South Korea, was officially received by the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) recently, the South Korean Embassy in Dhaka said on Sunday.
The kits, worth $800,000, were since distributed by DGHS to several test centres across the country, including Army Central Medical Hospital, Kuwait Bangladesh Friendship Hospital, and Dhaka Medical College Hospital.
DGHS will use the remaining kits in due course.
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In view of the latest surge in Covid-19 related deaths and newly confirmed cases in Bangladesh, the embassy said it hoped that the rapid test kits could help the health authorities successfully curb further aggravation of the situation.
In December 2020, South Korea provided $50 million as soft loan from its Economic Development Cooperation Fund to Bangladesh to financially support the urgent needs incurred by the pandemic.
South Korea will continue to stand by and support Bangladesh throughout the fight against Covid-19, said the embassy.
According to the Central Medical Stores Depot (CMSD), there is no shortage of Covid-19 testing kits at the moment with 376,779 testing kits in stock.
The health authorities have so far tested 4,783,385 samples since the pandemic made landfall in the country in March last year.
However, just two weeks ago, the number of daily tests was below the 20,000 mark.
As many as 12,000-14,000 testing kits are being used now while the number was 6,000 to 7,000 until mid-March.
CMSD Director Abu Hena said the government was taking an initiative to procure 400,000 more testing kits.
On Sunday, Bangladesh saw the highest number of people (7,087) testing positive for Covid-19 in a single day, taking the total number of cases to 637,364.
