BD sees second-highest infection rate in SA

The infection rate of coronavirus a million continued ballooning, making Bangladesh the second worst nation in the South Asian region, officials and physicians said.

According to the state-run Directorate General of Health Services or DGHS, the rate per million was just 40.39 on April 28.

Even a month ago, the rate was around 180. With recording 3,868 new cases in the last 24 hours, it rose to 800. This means 800 people in each million were tested COVID-19 positive, according to the DGHS data.

In the sub-continent, Bangladesh is only behind Pakistan, where the contagion rate per million was 890 as of June 27, 2020.

The data also showed that the rate of infections among the tested samples in Bangladesh is higher than other countries in South Asia.

Almost one in five samples was tested positive, which is the second-highest in the region after Afghanistan (43 per cent) till to date.

The infection rate in other countries was 16.40 per cent in Pakistan, 6.32 per cent in India, 5.0 per cent in the Maldives, 2.28 per cent in Nepal, 2.0 per cent in Sri Lanka and 0.15 per cent in Bhutan, according to Worldometer data.

In terms of recovery rate, Bangladesh (40.72 per cent) is the third-lowest in the region, and just above Afghanistan (38.84 per cent) and Nepal (23.74 per cent).

Raising the alarm bell over the quick rise in the number of infections and deaths, healthcare professionals called upon all to stay indoors and practice social distancing properly to prevent the spread of the deadly virus.

Expressing serious concern over the relaxation of restrictions on people's movement at this critical time, they feared that it could further deteriorate the situation in the densely-populated country.

On Friday's news conference, additional director general (administration) of the DGHS Prof Dr Nasima Sultana said that a total of 18,498 samples were tested in 66 labs across the country since Thursday.

With the tests, a total of 696,941 samples have so far been tested across the country.

Of the tests, some 3,868 samples were found COVID-19 positive along with 40 more deaths recorded across the country during the period, she said.

With these numbers, the overall tally of confirmed cases and deaths rose to 130474 and 1661 respectively, she said.

Fourteen of the latest deaths were recorded in Dhaka division, followed by 12 in Chattogram, four each in Khulna and Barishal, three each in Rangpur and Sylhet divisions, Dr Sultana said.

"Thirty-one of the deaths were male and nine others were female while thirty-one victims died at the hospital and nine others at home," she added.

The DGHS officials said 64,121 people now remain in both home and institutional quarantine while 13,800 others are in isolation.

Globally, over 9.7 million people were infected with the novel coronavirus and 492,410 died until Wednesday 7:00 pm, according to Worldometer data.