Covid positivity rate doubles in 8 days

Bangladesh has been experiencing an increasing trend in infection rate of coronavirus for the last few days as the health authorities recorded 421 more new cases of the virus with no causality in the last 24 hours till Monday morning.

The daily case positivity rate stood at 9.23 percent up from Sunday’s 8.87 percent, according to a handout of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).

The country saw a 4.93 percent infection rate on September 4 and since then, an increasing trend in the infection rate of the virus has been witnessed.

The new cases were detected after testing 4,560 samples at 881 government authorised laboratories in the country taking the caseload to 20,15,308 as of Monday.

With the updated data, the death toll of the virus remained unchanged at 29,334, said the DGHS in the handout.

Besides, the fatality recovery rate of the virus remained unchanged at 1.46 percent and 97.21 percent respectively.

Meanwhile, some 291 people recovered from the virus-related illness during the 24 hours period pushing the total number of recovery to 19,59,037.

The health authorities also detected 375 positive cases in Dhaka, five each in Mymensingh and Barishal divisions, nine in Chattogram, 16 in Rajshahi, four each in Khulna and Sylhet divisions and three in Rangpur divisions, during the period.

The country reported its first zero Covid-related death in a single day on November 20 last year, along with 178 infections.

On January 28, Bangladesh registered its previous highest daily positivity rate at 33.37 percent reporting 15,440 cases and 20 deaths.

The country registered the highest daily caseload of 16,230 on July 28 last year, while the highest number of daily fatalities was 264 on August 10 last year.

Since the outbreak of the virus in Wuhan province in China in 2019, the health authorities in Bangladesh confirmed the first case on March 8, 2020, and the first death on March 18 of the same year.

Worldometer, a reference website that provides counters and real-time statistics for diverse topics, has recorded 65, 16, 853 deaths so far caused by the virus and 61,39, 50, 810 cases worldwide.