Deadliest day of Covid claims 143 lives

The daily Covid-19 death toll in Bangladesh hit another high with 143 fatalities reported on Thursday as the country went into a strict lockdown with people confined to their homes, except for emergencies and to buy essentials.

The new record surpassed the previous peak of 119 on Sunday.

Covid hotspot Khulna reported 46 deaths, the highest among the eight divisions, closely followed by Dhaka with 35 deaths. Rajshahi division counted 19 deaths while Chittagong 15, Rangpur 10, Barisal eight, Sylhet seven, and Mymensingh three.   

Another 8,301 people tested positive in the 24 hours to Thursday morning, according to the latest figures from the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).

Dhaka logged 3,376 infections, the highest among the divisions, followed by Rajshahi with 1,279 cases, Khulna with 1,245, and Chittagong with 1,171.

The country also logged the second highest positivity rate of 25.9% since the pandemic began. On August 3, the test positivity stood at 31.91%. The overall test positivity rate stands at 13.88%.

The total number of deaths reached 14,646 while the number of total infections rose to 921,559 in the country.

On the other hand, another 4,663 patients recovered from the infectious disease across the country, taking the total recovery to 820,913.

The pandemic has so far claimed the lives of 10,415 men (71.11%) and 4,231 women (28.89%). 

The mortality rate against the total number of cases detected so far stands at 1.59%.

In the 24 hours to Thursday, 1,343 people received their second dose of the Oxford-Astrazeneca vaccine, taking the total number of people receiving the second jabs to 4,289,212. Meanwhile, a total of 5,820,015 people have received the first dose of the vaccine.

Additionally, 4,975 people received their first dose of the Sinopharm vaccine over the same period, taking the total to 60,565 till now while 906 people received the second dose of the vaccine in 24 hours, taking the total to 2,235 till Thursday. As many as 240 people have received their first dose of the Pfizer vaccine till now.

The health authorities in Bangladesh on March 8, 2020 reported the first three cases of Covid-19, a severe acute respiratory illness caused by a new coronavirus strain which was later named Sars-CoV-2.

Since November last year, five variants of the virus have been detected in Bangladesh, the Indian variant (B.1.617.2) being the latest. It was later renamed as the Delta variant.

The rest of the variants of the coronavirus identified in the country are the UK (B.1.1.7), South Africa (B.1.351), Nigeria (B.1.525) and Brazil (P1).

The novel coronavirus broke out in China's Wuhan city in late December 2019 and quickly spread throughout the world, becoming a pandemic in less than three months.

The fast spreading coronavirus has claimed more than 3,964,000 lives and infected as many as 183,083,000 people across the world till Thursday afternoon, according to Worldometer.

As many as 167,642,000 people have recovered from Covid-19 which has spread to 220 countries and territories across the planet.