Bangladesh recorded 34 deaths from Covid-19 in the last 24 hours - the highest single-day death toll reported in the country in the last three months.
With the latest figure, the number of total fatalities now stands at 8,797 as of Thursday morning, the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) said in a press release.
The country also logged a total of 3,587 new Covid-19 cases in the 24 hours until Thursday morning, taking the total number of infections to 584,395.
Thursday was the the third consecutive day that the daily tally of new cases crossed the 3,500-mark.
It was on July 2 last year when the country recorded the highest single-day caseload of 4,019. Since then, the number of daily cases remained below the 3,500-mark (except July 15 -- 3,533 cases), until Tuesday, when the number of daily infections stood at 3,554.
The latest figures show an infection rate of 13.26% while the overall infection rate in the country stands at 12.94%.
The month of March is seeing an upward trend of rising cases day by day. On March 1, 585 new Covid-19 cases were recorded, after over a month of a lower rate of infections.
The DGHS said 27,324 samples were collected from suspected Covid-19 patients in the last 24 hours while a total of 27,045 samples were tested in government and private testing facilities.
To date, as many as 4,514,731 tests have been conducted in the country.
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Of the 34 deceased – 25 men and nine women – 27 were from Dhaka division, three from Chittagong, and one each from Khulna, Barisal, Rangpur, and Mymensingh divisions.
Of the victims, 33 died at different hospitals and one at home.
So far, 6,650 men (75.59%) and 2,147 women (24.41%) have died from Covid-19 across the country.
Since the beginning, 4,974 people have died in Dhaka division, 1,609 in Chittagong, 489 in Rajshahi, 571 in Khulna, 267 in Barisal, 316 in Sylhet, 371 in Rangpur, and 200 in Mymensingh.
The mortality rate against the total number of cases detected so far stands at 1.51%.
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The health authorities said 1,985 people recovered from the disease over the preceding 24 hours.
So far, 529,894 patients – 90.67% – have made full recovery across the country.
On March 8, health authorities in Bangladesh reported the first three cases of Covid-19, a severe acute respiratory illness caused by a new coronavirus strain which was later named Sars-CoV-2. The first fatality was recorded in the country on March 18.
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 2,758,995 lives and infected as many as 125,555,043 people across the world till Thursday afternoon, according to worldometer.
As many as 101,372,045 people have recovered from Covid-19, which has affected 219 countries and territories across the planet.
