Published in: The Daily Star

Date: 8 August 2020

Many Asian countries have seen a drop in coronavirus infection rate in the last couple of months but in Bangladesh’s case it remained over 20 percent.

Since May 24 the country has seen a fluctuation in the number of daily Covid-19 tests, but the infection rate has persistently remained over 20 percent which means one out of each five tests came out positive each day.

In terms of total Covid-19 cases, Bangladesh ranks fifth in Asia, according to worldometer.info.

The first four countries are India, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The infection rate in the countries are 9.35 percent, 10.25 percent, 2.52 percent and 4.8 percent respectively on Thursday.

On the the same day, the infection rate was 23.43 percent in Bangladesh.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh has crossed the 2.5 lakh grim milestone with 2,851 new cases in 24 hours between Thursday and Friday morning.

According to Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), the total number of Covid-19 cases reached 252,502 in the country.

A total of 12,699 samples were tested in 84 labs across the country in the 24 hours and 22.45 percent of the tests resulted positive, said Dr Nasima Sultana, additional director general (administration) of DGHS.

However, comparing the data of Thursday of the 49 Asian countries, it is found that Bangladesh was second after Oman in terms of infection rate.

Oman lags far behind Bangladesh in terms of daily new case.

On Thursday, Oman had 427 new case whereas Bangladesh reported 2,977 cases, according to worldometer.info.

According to the WHO, Bangladesh is the top 15 countries in the world for its huge population infected with Covid-19.

Besides other countries of different regions in the world, Bangladesh crossed Turkey and Qatar in the last couple of months.

The infection rates in Turkey and Qatar are now 2.1 percent and 9.8 percent respectively.

Yesterday at the briefing, Dr Nasima said that a total of 27 died from coronavirus infections in the said 24 hours.

With this, the death toll due to Covid-19 in the country reached 3,333 and the death rate now stands at 1.32 percent of total COVID-19 cases.

Meanwhile, 1,760 Covid-19 patients have recovered in those 24 hours.

The total number of recoveries stands at 145,584 and the recovery rate at 57.66 percent.

A total of 815 people were put on isolation in those 24 hours, the DGHS official added during the briefing.

Among the dead, 24 were male and three were female. Four of aged between 41 and 50, six between 51 and60, 12 between 61 and70, four between 71 and 80, and one was between 81 and 90.

Source:

https://www.thedailystar.net/backpage/news/bangladesh-sees-no-drop-covid-infection-rate-1941377