Teetering on the edge of a brutal Covid-19 infection wave, Bangladesh reported 245 more deaths in 24 hours till Monday morning with 11,463 new cases.

The new numbers again raised the case fatality rate to 1.68% from Sunday’s 1.67%, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).

With the fresh deaths, the country’s total death tally reached 22,897 while the total cases mounted to 1,365,158.

The new cases were detected after the test of 47,207 samples slightly lowering the case positivity rate to 24.28% from Sunday’s 24.52%, the DGHS said.

Overwhelmed by the Delta variant Covid surge, Bangladesh has been seeing around 250 deaths and 13,000 cases daily on average for a week.

Besides, the recovery rate rose to 89.36% in Bangladesh from Sunday’s 89.05% with 14,412 new patients recovering from Covid-19 during this time.

Of the recent deaths, the highest 83 people died in Dhaka division, followed by 71 in Chattogram, 25 in Khulna, 19 in Rangpur, 18 in Sylhet, 13 in Mymensingh, 10 in Rajshahi, and six in Barishal divisions.

Of them, 128 were men and 117 were women.

As per their age breakup, two were between 11-20, 13 between 21-30, 20 between 31-40, 16 between 41-50, 55 between 51-60, 84 between 61-70, 35 between 71-80, 17 between 81-90 and three were between 91-100 years of age.

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Vaccine procurement update

Some 54 lakh more vaccine doses will arrive in Bangladesh by August 15 as the government has geared up its vaccination campaign, said Health Minister Zahid Maleque on Monday.

“Some 34 lakh doses of vaccine under Covax facility will arrive between August 9-10 to August 15 in addition to 10 lakh doses, purchased from China. Another 10 lakh doses of Sinopharm vaccine will arrive as a gift,” he said.

Besides,Bangladesh will receive another consignment of 34 lakh doses of Sinopharm vaccine next week while 60 lakh doses of Pfizer vaccine in the first week of September, said Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen on Thursday.

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Apart from that, Bangladesh will also receive 10 lakh doses of AstraZeneca vaccine soon which is likely to come under the COVAX facility, he said.

Referring to the Health Ministry, Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen on Thursday said that Bangladesh has a stock of 1.23 crore vaccine doses and some of them (AstraZeneca) will be kept for the second dose

As the ruthless Delta variant of Covid-19 keeps spreading like wildfire, Bangladesh on Saturday kicked off another phase of its mass vaccination drive aimed at inoculating 35 lakh people in six days.

Covid jabs will be administered simultaneously in 4,600 unions, 1,054 municipality areas and 433 wards of the city corporations, Director General of Health Services Dr ABM Khurshid Alam told the media on Friday.