Bangladesh stands 5th on the list of new Covid cases

On the 166th day of Covid-19 infection in Bangladesh, 2,401 new cases were reported. With this, the total number of coronavirus cases in the country now stands at 290,360.

Meanwhile, with 39 more deaths from the novel coronavirus in the last 24 hours till Friday at 8 am the death toll has climbed to 3,861, according to a press release from the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS). 

Bangladesh was in fifth position on the list of countries with new cases on Friday, although the country was in the 16th position in terms of total Covid-19 cases, according to the USA-based reference website worldometers.info.

India topped the list with 10,686 new cases, followed by Mexico, Russia and Philippines.

Professor Nazrul Islam, former vice-chancellor of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University and a noted virologist, told The Business Standard that it is not possible to contain the coronavirus without ensuring a complete isolation of patients after detection. 

Though a rapid surge of Covid-19 infections could be prevented thanks to lockdown measures, a gradual increase in infections is still taking place. Since the health guidelines are largely being neglected now, there is a possibility that the infection rate may rise in the coming days, he said.

The latest day's infection rate was 18.55 percent of the total tests conducted in the past 24 hours, though the overall rate in the country till date was 20.44 percent, and the death rate was 1.33 percent.  

Some 3,624 patients recovered from the coronavirus in the past 24 hours and the total number of recoveries reached 172,615, while the recovery rate is 59.45 percent.

Bangladesh confirmed the first Covid-19 cases on March 8 this year, and the first death from the coronavirus was reported 10 days after the detection of the maiden cases. 

Some 13,155 samples were collected in the last 24 hours and 12,943 were tested in 91 labs across the country. So far, 1,420,499 samples have been tested.

Of the dead patients on Friday, 27 were men and 12 were women. Moreover, 23 of them hailed from Dhaka, five from Chattogram, four from Sylhet, three from Khulna, two from Barisal and one each from Mymensingh and Rajshahi division.

Of the deceased, one was aged between 21 and 30 years, four were between 31 and 40 years, four within the 41-50 year age group, five between 51 and 60 years and 25 were above 60 years of age.

Thirty-six of them died in different hospitals and three at their respective residences.

The gender breakdown of Covid-19 victims shows that 3,046 or 78.89 percent of the total were men, and 815 or 21.11 percent were women.

While talking about division-wise fatalities, 1,854 hailed from Dhaka division, 863 from Chattogram, 316 from Khulna, 251 from Rajshahi, 183 from Sylhet, 160 from Rangpur, 151 from Barishal and 83 from Mymensingh division.