Bangladesh broke its previous records of single-day death count with 101 fatalities in 24 hours until Friday morning although the number of new cases remained below the 5,000 mark.

The death tally now stands at 10,182 with a mortality rate of 1.43 percent, the Directorate General of Health Services said in a handout.

With 4,417 new cases, the daily infection rate climbed to 23.36 percent.

Bangladesh reported its first coronavirus cases on March 8 last year and the first death on the 18th of that month.

So far, 711,779 cases have been confirmed, with 602,908 recoveries (84.7 percent of all patients) – including 5,694 in the last 24 hours.

Until now, 5,134,478 tests, including 18,906 in the last 24 hours, have been conducted. RT-PCR tests, considered the gold standard for Covid-19 testing, are being conducted at 121 facilities – 52 government and 69 private labs.

Also read: South Asia fast becoming new global epicentre of Covid-19: IFRC

81pc victims above 50

Of the latest victims, 67 are men and 34 are women. Of them, 94 died at hospitals.

Sixty-three out of the 101 victims are above the age of 60. So far, 7,566 men and 2,616 women have died from the virus.

In terms of age group, 56.35 percent are aged more than 60 years while 24.58 percent are aged between 51 and 60 years. Together, these two groups account for 80.93 percent of the total fatalities.

Dhaka has recorded 58.07 percent of the fatalities, followed by Chattogram (17.95 percent).

State of general, ICU beds

On Friday morning, there were 196 ICU beds available in the country with 912 general beds.

Also read: Lockdown day 3: Dhaka streets largely deserted

There are 10,661 general beds for coronavirus patients and 5,419 of them are currently occupied. On the other hand, there are only 822 ICU beds and 626 of them are occupied at the moment.

The government has been saying that it is increasing the number of beds at hospitals to treat the rising number of patients.

Virus deaths soar in April

The virus claimed 568 lives in January this year, 281 in February and 638 in March.

Also read: Global Covid-19 cases approach 139 million

Between April 1 and April 15, the country registered 1,035 deaths and 96,022 new cases.

On Thursday, the country recorded 94 deaths, a day after registering the highest number of single-day fatalities (96). The figure was 69 on Tuesday, 83 on Monday, 78 on Sunday and 77 on Saturday.