Bangladesh has seen a sharp rise in coronavirus cases as it ends the fifth week after the first cases were confirmed in early March.
Over 400 cases were confirmed in the seven days between April 5 and 11, nearly 19 times higher than the previous week.
Bangladesh confirmed its first three Covid-19 cases on March 8. In the seven days between March 15 and 21, the disease control agency, IEDCR, reported 21 cases and another 24 in the third week.
The country has seen a sharp surge in locally transmitted cases since April 6, when 35 cases were reported, up from 18 the previous day.
The highest number of cases on a single day,112, was reported two days later on April 9, up from 54 the previous day.
On Saturday, 58 more cases were reported, taking the tally of infections to 482 in Bangladesh. The death toll has risen to 30 as three patients died in the last 24 hours.
Some 36 people have recovered from the disease while 416 people are undergoing treatment at hospitals or at home in isolation.
According to the Institute of Epidemiology Disease Control and Research (IEDCR), cases have been reported from at least 26 districts, apart from the capital Dhaka.
Taking a scary turn
Bangladesh seems to be on the track of the US, Italy, Spain, France and the UK, where coronavirus cases sky-rocketed within weeks.
It took the US some seven weeks to see a steep rise which has strained the country’s healthcare infrastructure.
It was something between 44 to 48 days for Spain while Italy was an exception as it failed to enforce social distancing causing a massive deterioration in just five weeks.
According to Worldometer, most countries started to report 100 to 200 cases daily within four weeks of the first confirmed cases, which shot up to several hundred per day in the sixth week, crossing the 1,000 mark while entering the seventh week.
With the number of infections shooting up in Bangladesh, the government has extended its nationwide shutdown to April 25.
It also tightened its social distancing rules on Saturday, ordering citizens not to leave their homes from 6pm to 6am.
All shops, except for drugstores, have been ordered shut by 6pm as the coronavirus crisis continues to escalate.
