As Covid-19 continues its onslaught despite lockdown, Bangladesh on Thursday registered 74 more deaths during the last 24 hours till Thursday morning, breaking its all the previous records.

The number of new Coronavirus cases dropped slightly to 6,854 after remaining over 7,000 for the past four days, said a handout issued by the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).

With the new 74 deaths, the Covid-19 fatalities rose to 9,521 while the mortality rate remained static at 1.43 percent.

 Also read:Bangladesh begins second phase of Covid-19 vaccination drive

The infection rate slipped to 20.65 percent from 22.02 percent on Wednesday.

During the reporting period, 3,391 patients recovered, raising the number of recoveries to 565,030, the DGHS said.

Even though the government enforced a weeklong lockdown restricting people’s movement, shutting shops, markets and suspending operations of public transport (bus, train and domestic flights), people took it lightly and are moving around freely defying the restrictions.

Later, the government allowed the movement of public transports in city corporation areas and reopened shops and shopping malls until April 13.  

The virus claimed 568 lives in Bangladesh in January alone this year, while 281 in February and 638 in March. Bangladesh has so far recorded 666,132 coronavirus cases, according to the handout.

The number of daily cases and infection rate had dropped below 5 percent earlier this year but then it continued to rise due to people’s reluctance about maintaining health safety rules.  

Hospitals are overflowing with Corona patients and finding it hard to provide treatment to the growing number of people with their limited resources.

Bangladesh reported its first cases on March 8 last year and confirmed the first death from the virus 10 days later.

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Bangladesh has so far tested 4,915,758 samples, including 33,193 in the last 24 hours, the DGHS said.

Of the deceased, 43 died in Dhaka division, 15 in Chattogram, 3 in Rajshahi, seven in each Khulna, four in Barishal and two in Sylhet divisions.

As of now, 5,482 coronavirus patients died in Dhaka division, 1,709 in Chattogram, 520 in Rajshahi, 604 in Khulna, 284 in Barishal, 334 in Sylhet, 381 in Rangpur and 207 in Mymensingh division.

So far, 7130 men (74.89) and 2,391 women (25.11) died of Covid-19.

Vaccination drive

The government launched a countrywide vaccination campaign on February 7 with doses received from the Serum Institute of India.

Also read:Shots in little arms: COVID-19 vaccine testing turns to kids

Bangladesh on Thursday began its second phase of inoculating people against the coronavirus disease amid uncertainty around vaccine availability.

Alarming global surge

Around 132,944,526 Covid-19 cases have been confirmed around the world, according to the data received from the Centre for System Science and Engineering of Johns Hopkins University.

Besides, the death toll from the virus hit 2,886,103 till Thursday morning.