Covid positivity rate below 20% for 3 days

The Covid situation in the country seems to be improving as the positivity rate has been declining for the last five days and went below 20% for the last three consecutive days.

On 6 February, the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) reported a positivity rate of 28.95% since when the rate started to decline to 21.07% on 7 February and 20.03% on 8 February and dropped to below 20% on 9, 10 and 11 February with 18.83%, 16.95% and 15.46% respectively.

In the last 24 hours till 8am Friday, health authorities reported 27 deaths and 5,268 new Covid cases after testing 34,067 samples. Of the deceased, 14 were reported in Dhaka, five in Chattogram, four in Khulna, two in Sylhet and one each in Rajshahi and Barishal divisions.

In the Dhaka city and Dhaka district, seven deaths and 2,934 new Covid patients were identified during the same period.

So far, 18,99,803 people got infected and 28,771 died of Covid in Bangladesh. The recovery count rose to 16,55,981 after another 11,353 patients were discharged from the hospitals during the past day.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, 87.17% of Covid patients recovered while 1.51% died. Among the total 28,771 fatalities, 12,620 occurred in the Dhaka division, 5,808 in Chattogram, 2,113 in Rajshahi, 3,687 in Khulna, 965 in Barishal, 1,307 in Sylhet, 1,396 in Rangpur and 875 in Mymensingh divisions, read DGHS data.

Bangladesh reported its first Covid case on 8 March 2020 and the maiden death on 18 March the same year.

Globally, over 406.41 million people have been infected with the virus and 5.79 million have died in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

Shop-owners, workers to get Covid vaccine from Saturday

The government has taken an initiative to provide Covid vaccine to all shop owners and staff in the capital from Saturday. To this end, the capital has been segmented into 10 zones.

On the first day of the programme, shop owners and employees of Uttara Zone will be given the first dose of the Sinovac vaccine. Local Member of Parliament Mohammad Habib Hasan is scheduled to inaugurate the programme at 10am on Saturday at the Friends Club ground in Sector-3, Uttara.

On 7 February, Health Minister Zahid Maleque said people were reluctant in taking vaccines. To date, 10 crore eligible citizens, which accounts for 70% of the total population, have been inoculated.

"Over 6.5 crore people have received their second dose. We have 10 crore jabs in stock. I doubt we will be able to use all of those," the minister added.