PM orders testing 1000 samples by today: DGHS

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has ordered the Directorate General of Health Services to conduct coronavirus tests on 1,000 samples by Friday.

"We have been instructed to collect 1,000 samples by tomorrow and test them for coronavirus by tomorrow," said Habibur Rahman, director of Management Information System, Directorate General of Health Services, in a virtual briefing on Wednesday.

He also said two new coronavirus patients were found in Bangladesh in the last 24 hours after testing 141 samples. With this, the number of confirmed cases in the country now stands at 56.

"The newly diagnosed patients are male, one aged around 30 and another more than 60," the DGHS director said.

"In the last 24 hours, a total of 1,413 were placed in quarantine, among them, nine are in institutional quarantine and rest in home quarantine. Some 16,700 people are in home quarantine and 78 patients in isolation currently," he said.

"So far 1,042,952 calls were received on hotlines and in the last 24 hours the hotlines received 66,465 calls," he added.

In the briefing, the director said the prime minister has directed them to collect two samples from each upazila every day for testing.

However, in a press statement last night, the DGHS said the information had been presented wrongly. The prime minister actually advised all health directors and civil surgeon officials to collect samples from different parts of the country for coronavirus test.

The IEDCR confirmed the first death from coronavirus infection in Bangladesh on March 18, second on March 21, third on March 23, fourth on March 24, fifth on March 25 and sixth death on April 1.

Globally, 937,567 people have so far got infected with the highly contagious coronavirus and 47,256 have died from it, according to Johns Hopkins University data.