The single-day Covid-19 infection rate has declined slightly in Bangladesh with 1,014 new cases recorded in the last 24 hours.
With the new cases logged between 8am Friday and 8am Saturday, the total number of infections has risen to 556,236.
Twelve more people also died around the country during the same period. The death toll from the deadly disease currently stands at 8,527 — taking the mortality rate in every 100 cases to 1.53%.
It was on January 10 when the country last recorded a higher single-day caseload above the 1,000 mark (1,071 cases). Since then, the number remained below the 1,000 mark, until Wednesday when it shot to 1,018.
The month of March has been witnessing an upward trend of rising cases day by day. On March 1, 585 new (above 500) Covid-19 cases were recorded, after almost a month of a lower rate of infections.
According to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) press release, issued Saturday afternoon, the infection or test positivity rate from the last 24 hours was 6.26% and the overall rate to date stood at 13.09%.
On Wednesday, the rate was 5.98% and it went down slightly to 5.82% on Thursday. But, the rate bounced back to 6.62% on Friday.
Of the deceased of the last 24 hours, nine were men and three were women — all from Dhaka Division.
Among the total deceased since March last year, 6,451 were men and 2,076 were women.
Meanwhile, 16,206 samples, including the pending ones, were tested in 219 labs across the country in the past 24 hours.
Also, 1,138 patients were declared free of Covid-19 at the same time, raising the total to 510,310 with a 91.74% recovery rate.
Currently, 9,648 people are in isolation and 32,319 are quarantined around the country, according to DGHS.
The country's first three cases were reported on March 8 last year and the first death from the novel coronavirus 10 days later.
Meanwhile, more than 5.57 million people registered around the country to get the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine till Saturday afternoon, said the health directorate.
Until Thursday, over 4.21 million people had been vaccinated nationwide since January 27, when the pilot vaccination program started. No vaccination took place on Friday.
The novel coronavirus broke out in China's Wuhan city in late December 2019 and quickly spread throughout the world, becoming a pandemic in less than three months.
The fast-spreading coronavirus has claimed more than 2,653,724 lives and infected as many as 119,718,103 people across the world till Saturday afternoon, according to worldometer.
As many as 96,343,270 people have recovered from Covid-19, which has affected 219 countries and territories across the planet.
