The Covid-19 pandemic has claimed 408 lives in Bangladesh with an additional 22 fatalities in the daily death tally.
The numbers of positive cases are also rising gradually with 1,773 fresh cases, taking the total positive count to 28,511, according to the daily health bulletin of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) on Thursday.
Health and Family Welfare Minister Zahid Maleque meanwhile noted that the country was “moving towards its peak.”
He said once the graph of fresh cases started showing a downward trend, it would be easier to assess when the peak time would be here. “But it is a positive thing that when the country is seeing a rise in the numbers of positive cases; the jump is not that big.”
He made the comment at the handover of the coronavirus drug “Remdesivir,” manufactured by Beximco Pharmaceuticals, at the secretariat on Thursday. Beximco is set to market the “Remdesivir” drug as “Bemsivir.”
However, the increase in the number of infections is actually just a marker in the detection of positive cases – a result of increased tests. Despite that, though, so far only a little more than 200,000 tests have been conducted.
Habibur Rahman Khan, additional secretary of the Health Service Division, on Wednesday had said the upward trend of coronavirus would continue for around two weeks.
The last 24 hours also saw the highest spike in positive cases globally. According to Worldometer, a total of 100,474 new coronavirus cases in the world were recorded on Wednesday, taking the total number of Covid-19 cases to 5,083,411. The number is 5,661 higher than that of the previous day.
Of the 22 new deaths in Bangladesh, 19 were male and three female. Sixteen of them died under treatment at hospitals and five at their homes. One victim died on the way to hospital.
Prof Nasima Sultana, Additional Director General (Administration) of the DGHS, said ten of the victims were from Dhaka division, eight from Chittagong division, three from Sylhet division and one from Mymensingh division.
Ten people were aged between 51-60, three were between 61-70, two each between 11-20, 41-50, 71-80, and 81-90 years old, and one was aged between 31-40 years, she said.
As many as 10,174 samples were collected and 10,262 were tested in 47 labs (four of them new) across the country in the past 24 hours, taking the total number of tests conducted so far to 214,114, she added.
Prof Nasima Sultana also said that 395 more Covid-19 patients had recovered from the infection in the past 24 hours, taking the total number of recovered patients to 5,602.
In the last 24 hours, 154 people were taken into isolation while a total of 3,897 people were currently in isolation. Around 13,284 isolation beds had been prepared across the country, Nasima Sultana said.
In a day, 4,032 people had been taken into quarantine while the facility was provided to 2,55,534 people in total. About 626 institutions had been prepared throughout the country, where altogether 31,840 people could be quarantined at a time, she added.
There were 319,842 phone calls in all of the dedicated hotlines and a total 6,798,526 calls were made till date. There were no passengers in the air and sea ports while 47 people were screened at landports across the country, Nasima said.
Six days ago, on May 16, deaths from coronavirus infection crossed the 300-mark in Bangladesh. The country recorded its first fatality on March 18.
Covid-19 had claimed 330,803 lives and infected 5,123,754 people across the world till last night, according to Worldometer.
As many as 2,043,139 people have recovered from Covid-19, which has spread to 213 countries and territories across the globe.
