Bangladesh reports 7,462 fresh Covid-19 cases, 63 deaths

Amid an alarming surge in Covid-19 cases, Bangladesh recorded 7,462 new infections and 63 more deaths in the last 24 hours till Friday 8am. 

The weeks-long surge, much steeper than last year's first wave, has forced the government to think about more restrictive measures including a full lockdown likely from 14 April.

With the new cases, the Covid-19 caseload now stands at 6,73,594 with an infection rate of 23.57%. However, the overall infection rate in the country stands at 13.62%.

Besides, the death toll now reached at 9,584 with a fatality rate of 1.42%.

Among the latest day's victims, 43 were men and 20 were women. All of them died in different hospitals across the country.

Moreover, 42 of them hailed from Dhaka, 10 from Chattogram, four from Barishal, three from Khulna, two from Rajshahi and one each from Sylhet and Mymensingh division.

Meanwhile, 31,654 samples were tested in 243 labs across the country in the past 24 hours. A total of 49,47,412 samples have been tested in the country so far.

Also, 3,511 patients were declared free of Covid-19 during the same period, raising the total number of recoveries to 568,541 with an 84.40% recovery rate.

The gender breakdown of Covid-19 victims shows that 7,173 of the total deceased were men and 2,411 were women.

The country's maiden cases were reported on  8 March last year and the first death from the virus was reported on 18 March.

Meanwhile, neighbouring India has set another record of daily Covid cases with 1,31,968 infections in the last 24 hours, reports NDTV. The total case count reached over 1.3 crore in India. Besides, 1,67,642 people have died of Covid-19 in India, with 780 deaths in the last 24 hours. India is the third worst-hit country after the United States and Brazil.

As of Friday, 2,917,973 people has died of Covid-19 globally with 134,638,659 cases of infection have been recorded so far.