The daily coronavirus deaths in Bangladesh has hit a 53-day low while new infections fell to the lowest in over a year.
In the 24 hours to Saturday morning, 22 fatalities were reported, taking the toll so far to 12,124.
It is the lowest single-day death count since March 23 when the health authorities recorded 18 fatalities.
The number of infections rose to 779,796 after 261 new cases were recorded— the lowest since April 14, 2020 when 209 cases were confirmed.
The decrease in the number of cases can mostly be attributed to a smaller collection of samples during the Eid-ul-Fitr holidays.
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Only 3,758 samples, among the lowest collections since the outbreak of the disease in March 2020, were tested across the country in the 24-hour period, yielding a positivity rate of 6.95%.
Meanwhile, another 964 patients recovered from Covid-19 through treatment at home and in hospital care, the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) said in a press release.
Of the 22 deceased — 17 men and five women — 13 were from Dhaka Division, eight from Chittagong and one from Khulna.
Eighteen of them died at state-owned hospitals while four died at private ones.
So far, 8,779 men (72.41%) and 3,345 women (27.59%) have died of Covid-19 across the country.
The mortality rate against the total number of cases detected currently stands at 1.55%.
To date, 5,702,286 tests have been conducted in the country, leading to an overall infection rate of 13.68%.
Up to this point, 721,435 patients — 92.52% of all infected — have recovered from Covid-19 across the country.
On March 8, 2020, the 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 novel coronavirus broke out in China's Wuhan city in late December in 2019 and quickly spread throughout the world, becoming a pandemic in less than three months.
The fast-spreading coronavirus has claimed 3,373,309 lives and infected 162,600,776 people across the world till Saturday afternoon, according to Worldometer, a reference website that provides counters and real-time statistics for diverse topics.
As many as 140,505,035 people have recovered from Covid-19, which has affected 222 countries and territories across the planet.
