An appalling record number of 13,768 Covid cases was reported in Bangladesh while 220 people lost the battle to the deadly virus in 24 hours till Monday morning.

The new numbers took the country’s caseload to 1,034,957 while the death tally to 16,639, according to a handout issued by the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).

Just a day before, the country saw a record-high 11,856 cases and 230 deaths on Sunday.  

The country has been seeing an average of 201 deaths daily for the last seven days. A total of 2,136 people lost battle to Covid-19 in the month of July so far.

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The fresh cases were detected after testing 44,067 samples which takes the country’s daily case positivity rate to 31.24% from Sunday’s 29.67%, said the DGHS.  

The fatality rate remained unchanged at 1.61% during the period.

The country saw 2,404 Covid deaths in April, 1,169 in May and 1,884 in June making those the most fatal months of this year. Also, July was the most fatal month in 2020, reporting 1,264 deaths followed by 1,197 deaths in June that year.

So far, 881,521 people recovered from the disease taking the country’s recovery rate to 85.17%, which is on the decline compared to other indicators.

Of the deceased reported today, 121 were aged over 60 years, 46 were between the ages of 51 to 60, 26 were between 41 to 50 years, 17 were between 31 to 40 years, nine were between 21 to 30 years and one was between 11 to 20 years.

Dhaka division, the worst hit region so far, reported 64 of the deaths today while Khulna saw 55 deaths and Chattogram 37. Besides, 23 people died in Rajshahi, 18 in Rangpur, 13 in Mymensingh, six in Sylhet and four in Barishal divisions.

Vaccination drive

The government has so far approved the emergency use of Oxford-AstraZeneca, Sinopharm (China), Sputnik-V (Russia), Pfizer-BioNTech (USA/Germany), Crona Vac (China) and Janssen single-dose vaccines.

Also read: Covid shatters all records in Bangladesh with 230 single-day deaths, 11,856 cases

Amid the deteriorating coronavirus situation, the government resumed the countrywide mass registration on July 8 for receiving Covid-19 jabs, which remained suspended for around three months as vaccine procurement became unsure.

Meanwhile, the Mass inoculation for Covid-19 have resumed on Monday with Chinese vaccine Sinopharm in district and upazila hospitals from Tuesday (July 13) and it will resume with Covax’s Moderna jabs in municipal hospitals, said the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) on Sunday.

Bangladesh is currently administering the doses of Sinopharm vaccine and Pfizer BioNTech vaccine and also the second dose of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

As of now, 268,253 people received the first dose of China’s Sinopharm vaccine, and 2,259 have received the second dose of it.

Meanwhile, 29,852 people have received the first jabs of Pfizer vaccine, including 7,510 in the past 24 hours.

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Of the Astrazeneca vaccine doses, 4,295,568 received the second shot and 5,820,033 the first one so far.