Global Covid-19 cases cross 170 million mark

With the new variants of Covid-19 spreading faster than ever before in several nations, the global corona cases have now topped 170 million.

According to Johns Hopkins University (JHU), the total case count and fatalities surged to 170,188,075 and 3,537,835, respectively, till Monday morning.

To date, 1,864,810,057  (1.86 billion) vaccine doses have been administered across the world.

The US, the world's worst-hit country in terms of cases and deaths, has so far logged 33,258,623 infections and 594,430 fatalities, respectively, as per the JHU data.

Brazil on Sunday reported 874 more deaths from Covid-19, raising the national count to 461,931, the Ministry of Health said.

A total of 43,520 more infections were detected, raising the nationwide tally to 16,515,120, the ministry said.

Brazil has the world's second highest Covid-19 death toll, after the United States, and the third largest caseload, following the United States and India.

Meanwhile, India has recorded 27,894, 800 cases as of Monday morning, with 325,972 fatalities.

India's hospitals are packed with Covid-19 patients and the shortage of oxygen is only intensifying the woes of patients and their relatives.

Situation in Bangladesh

As the Covid-19 still remains grim in Bangladesh, it recorded 34 more Coronavirus-related deaths and 1,444 new cases in 24 hours until Sunday morning.

The latest figures pushed up the total fatalities to 12,583.

The new infections were detected after carrying out 14,277 sample tests, as the daily infection rate jumped above 10 percent once again.

Bangladesh reported its first coronavirus cases on March 8 last year and the first death on the 18th of that month.

The government has extended the ongoing lockdown by another week until June 6 to stem the spread of Coronavirus.

On Sunday, the Cabinet Division issued a circular in this regard.

Vaccination Drive

Bangladesh kicked off its vaccination drive on February 7 with Oxford-AstraZeneca doses it acquired from the Serum Institute of India.

Bangladesh signed an agreement with Serum for 30 million doses. But a record number of cases in India has made the delivery of the doses uncertain.

However, DGHS DG Prof ABM Khurshid Alam has said that Bangladesh will get 2.1 million doses of the vaccine by early May.

In the past 24 hours, 38 people have received the first dose and 83,540 have received the second dose of Covid vaccine, according to the DGHS handout.

So far, a total of 72,48,829 people have received the vaccine, of which 31,06709 got their second dose.