Bangladesh has recorded the highest Covid-19 death toll and positive cases in a single day, with 21 new deaths and 1,602 fresh cases in the last 24 hours.
It has been two months since the first Covid-19 death was reported on March 18, while the first case was detected ten days prior to that.
With the latest figures, the country's Covid-19 death toll has risen to 349 and the total confirmed Covid-19 cases as of Monday had climbed to 23,870.
Bangladesh has climbed to 29 in the list of countries with the highest number of Covid-19 cases as of Monday, according to Worldometer.
Prof Nasima Sultana, Additional Director General (Administration) of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), revealed the latest figures on Monday afternoon at a daily online bulletin on the Covid-19 situation.
Of the 21 dying in one day, four were female and 17 were male.
Twelve of the deceased died in Dhaka division, seven in Chittagong division, one in Sylhet division and one in Rajshahi division, she added.
Nasima Sultana said six had died in Dhaka city, two in Dhaka district, one each in Sylhet, Bogra, Gopalganj, Munshiganj, Tangail, Manikganj and Noakhali, and two each in Chittagong district, Comilla and Chittagong city, and Feni.
Nasima Sultana said one of the deceased was between 11 and 20 years of age, two between 31 and 40, six between 41 and 50, eight in their 50s, and five between 61 and 70 years of age.
Meanwhile on Monday, 212 more patients recovered, taking the total number of those who have recovered to 4,585.
Against the total number of detected cases, statistics show, the recovery rate is 19.21% and mortality rate is 1.46% in Bangladesh, Prof Nasima Sultana said.
She said 231 more people were taken to isolation in the last 24 hours, taking the number of isolated Covid-19 patients to 3,383 across the country.
Ninety-six patients had been released in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of people released from isolation to 1,700, she added.
The country’s selected hospitals are equipped with altogether 9,134 isolation beds, 339 intensive care units (ICUs), and 102 dialysis units, Prof Nasima Sultana reported at the briefing.
She said as many as 9,788 samples had been tested in 42 labs across the country in the past 24 hours, taking the total number of tests conducted so far to 1,85,196.
On May 16, deaths from coronavirus infection crossed the 300-mark in Bangladesh.
Saying that smoking increases the risk of being affected by Covid-19, she requested all to quit smoking ahead of World No Tobacco Day on May 31.
A severe acute respiratory illness caused by a new strain of coronavirus, Sars-CoV-2 broke out in China's Wuhan in December last year and quickly spread throughout the world, becoming a pandemic in less than three months.
The fast spreading coronavirus had claimed 317,188 lives and infected 4,829,973 people across the world till Monday, according to Worldometer.
As many as 1,871,669 people have recovered from Covid-19, which has spread to 213 countries and territories across the globe.
