Bangladesh’s daily coronavirus cases dropped to a two-week low as the country battles a deadly second wave induced by the Delta variant, first identified in India.
The single-day count stood at 8,489 infections on Saturday with 204 fatalities recorded. On July 3, the health authorities recorded 6,214 cases, the lowest in the month, so far.
The latest figures take the total fatalities to 17,669 while the caseload surged to 1,092,411 since the pandemic broke out in March last year.
However, sample-testing dropped. In the 24 hours to Saturday morning, 29,214 samples were tested with a positivity rate of 29.06%, down by 12,773 tests from the previous day.
The authorities expect single-day infections to drop further this week as an outcome of the two-week strict lockdown from July 1, which has now been lifted for nine days due to Eid.
“However, the infection rate may shoot up after the Eid holidays,” said Mizanur Rahman, the director for MIS at the Directorate General of Health Services.
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Dhaka logged 4,480 cases, the highest among the divisions followed by Chittagong with 1,885 cases, Khulna with 539, and Rajshahi with 589.
Dhaka division reported 82 deaths, the highest among the eight divisions, followed by Khulna with 49 deaths.
Chittagong division counted 32 deaths while Rajshahi had 20, Rangpur 10, Barisal five, Mymensingh four, and Sylhet two.
The mortality rate against the total number of cases detected so far stands at 1.62%.
Vaccination
As it was Friday the vaccination program was halted for the day.
Till now 4,296,738 people have been administered the first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Meanwhile, a little over 1.525 million people have received the first dose of the vaccine and are awaiting the second dose.
Additionally, 651,549 people received the first dose of the Sinopharm vaccine till Thursday, while 2,259 people received the second dose.
Meanwhile, 46,981 people have been administered the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine.
Additionally, 112,571 people have received the first dose of the Moderna vaccine till now.
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The health authorities in Bangladesh reported the first three cases on March 8 last year.
The fast-spreading coronavirus has claimed more than 4.09 million lives across the world and infected more than 190.435 million people, according to Worldometer.
A little over 173.601 million people have recovered from the virus, which has spread to 220 countries and territories across the planet.
