COVID
Bangladesh reports 9 more Covid-19 cases in 24 hours
Bangladesh reported nine more Covid-19 cases in the 24 hours till Tuesday morning.
With the new numbers, the country's total caseload rose to 2,037,773, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
However, the official death toll from the disease remained unchanged at 29,445 as no new fatalities were reported.
The daily case test positivity rate increased to 0.72 percent from Monday’s 0.49 percent as 1250 samples were tested.
The recovery rate increased to 98.15 percent. However, the death rate remained unchanged at 1.44 percent.
Bangladesh registered its highest daily caseload of 16,230 on July 28 last year and highest number of fatalities of 264 on August 10 the same year.
Bangladesh reports 8 more Covid cases
Bangladesh reported eight more Covid cases in the 24 hours to Friday morning.
With the new numbers, the country's total caseload rose to 2,037,738, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
However, the official death toll from the disease remained unchanged at 29,445 as no new fatalities were reported.
The daily case test positivity rate rose to 0.67 percent from Thursday's 0.45 percent as 1,201 samples were tested.
The recovery rate increased to 98.09 percent. However, the death rate remained unchanged at 1.44 percent.
Bangladesh registered its highest daily caseload of 16,230 on July 28 last year and highest number of fatalities of 264 on August 10 the same year.
US lauds countries, partners including Bangladesh who participated in COVID-19 Global Action Plan
The United States has offered its appreciation to those countries and partners including Bangladesh who participated in the COVID-19 Global Action Plan throughout the past year.
Argentina, Australia, Belize, Botswana, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Maldives, Morocco, Namibia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Africa, Spain, Thailand, the African Union (Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), the European Union, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and the World Health Organization (WHO) are among the countries and partners.
Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen participated in the virtual COVID-19 Global Action Plan (GAP) Foreign Ministerial Meeting convened by the State Secretary of the USA, Antony J. Blinken on Wednesday.
One year ago, a diverse group of governments and organizations gathered to launch the COVID-19 Pandemic Prioritized Global Action Plan for Enhanced Engagement (“GAP”) with the objective of focusing political will and enhancing coordination to end the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic and strengthen readiness for future pandemic threats, according to Chair’s statement at the COVID-19 Global Action Plan Ministerial.
The GAP built on global COVID-19 response activities and commitments with a focus on six immediate Lines of Effort (LOEs): (1) Turning Vaccines into Vaccinations; (2) Bolstering Supply Chain Resilience; (3) Addressing Information Gaps; (4) Supporting Health Care Workers; (5) Promoting Acute Non-Vaccine Interventions; and (6) Strengthening the Global Health Security Architecture by advancing immediate and long-term reforms and governance that will impact both pandemic response today and future global health security.
On Wednesday, the GAP partners re-convened to assess the work of the GAP, identify remaining barriers to managing COVID-19, and reflect upon lessons learned to promote future collaboration to address global health security threats.
GAP Ministers and partners hailed the complementary domestic, bilateral, and multilateral efforts to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, and welcomed in particular the actions that have accelerated medical countermeasure access and distribution through increased response coordination across GAP countries.
They also acknowledged the challenges that remain and reaffirmed their shared enduring commitment to working together to address these challenges.
U.S. Secretary of State Blinken noted that by enhancing coordination among partners – and elevating the level of political commitment and strategic communication – the GAP provided a forum to advance global health security efforts, to help save lives and livelihoods, and to operationalize the axiom that “health security is national security.”
Enhanced Engagement in Combatting COVID-19
GAP partners affirmed the importance of collective, coordinated political action in addressing the pandemic. COVID-19 highlighted that diseases pose a direct threat to core elements of foreign policy, including economic growth and development; peace and security; and equity and human dignity, renewing awareness of the need to view global health from a broad perspective.
It also demonstrated that no one country acting alone can stop a pandemic; the greatest successes in combatting COVID-19 have occurred when countries, regions, and global and multilateral institutions have acted together. Building on the two leader-level COVID-19 Summits hosted by the White House, the GAP established a political mechanism for pandemic crisis management to exchange information and coordinate responses.
Reflection on the Global Action Plan
Participants took the opportunity to review the accomplishments of the GAP. They asserted that the GAP played a significant role, together with other multilateral and bilateral efforts, in generating political will and attention to drive new and existing efforts to advance common priorities and coordinated efforts to end the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Together, GAP partners have coordinated resources and capacities, and driven toward global COVID-19 vaccination targets.
Cooperating with initiatives like the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) including COVAX, Global VAX, and the COVID-19 Vaccine Delivery Partnership (CoVDP), the average vaccination rate in GAP-targeted lower-income countries increased to over 50 percent, and in many of the targeted countries reached nearly full coverage for all at-risk health workers and older people.
Partners noted that around 13 billion vaccine doses have been delivered globally. GAP members helped facilitate last-mile support for almost 80 countries; large-scale assistance to vaccinate, test, and treat; new policies to help achieve vaccine targets for high-risk populations including the elderly and health workers; supported youth vaccination and booster campaigns; and worked toward integrating COVID-19 services into routine health systems.
Country partners also worked to create cold storage solutions appropriate for challenging environments, and to expand access to non-vaccine interventions, including testing, oral antivirals, and medical oxygen.
GAP partners supported regional diversification of manufacturing and regional hubs for mRNA vaccine development and agreed to establish an implementation group to improve global access to medical supplies and services through a global clearinghouse mechanism for COVID-19-related products.
They shared information on harmful mis- and disinformation, condemned active disinformation campaigns, and supported community-level interventions to combat information gaps.
Further Work on the COVID-19 Response
At the Ministerial today, participants identified areas needing further work, noting that global suffering caused by COVID-19 has not ended despite heroic efforts by our healthcare workers, private citizens, institutions, and organizations.
Even with the current wide availability of vaccines, there is a persistent need to focus efforts on protecting the world’s most vulnerable from COVID-19, including through flexible and targeted strategies to address barriers to vaccinating the most vulnerable and at-risk populations, especially in disaster and conflict zones.
Partners called for continued work to integrate COVID-19 vaccines, including boosters, into each country’s national vaccine strategy, while minimizing future disruptions to routine immunizations and health services.
They acknowledged the great strides made in testing and treatment, but also noted that more needs to be done to address equitable access, including to diagnostic testing, oral antivirals, and medical oxygen.
Partners noted the importance of identifying appropriate opportunities for coordination and investment by the global community for improved access and demand in low- and low-middle income countries for safe, effective, and affordable medical countermeasures, including therapeutics.
GAP partners affirmed the need for genetic sequencing and rapid reporting for the timely detection of emerging variants of concern.
Need for Future Cooperation
Participants welcomed the heightened interest in health security as a foreign policy concern.
They affirmed their commitment to promote international cooperation and coordination through political dialogue, exchange of experiences, and strategic discussions – including building genuine partnerships with a wide range of relevant stakeholders.
They vowed to fight any attempt to weaponize health issues through information manipulation and interference, including disinformation.
Ministers stated that lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic must be used to inform the future response to be better prepared when new infectious disease threats emerge.
They called for strengthening the global health architecture and national, regional, and global capacities related to biosurveillance, epidemiological intelligence, labs, genomic sequencing, and primary care systems.
Participants noted the need for pandemic surge capacities and platforms to promote more rapid and equitable responses and access to affordable medical countermeasures, and discussed the desire for rapid, consistent, and transparent outbreak-related information, data, and sample sharing.
GAP participants noted the need for strong, resilient healthcare systems with effective infection prevention and control measures, including pursuing universal health coverage.
They also called for ensuring timely access to critical medical countermeasures, including in humanitarian settings during future health crises.
In order to sustain evolving demand for the production of vaccines, tests, and treatments for COVID-19 and future threats, GAP partners recognized the need to stay focused on diversifying production and supporting new producers and platforms including through consideration of competitive pricing, demand generation schemes, voluntary transfer of technology on mutually agreed terms, capacity-building, and skills and regulatory strengthening.
GAP partners affirmed the principle that no one is truly safe until everyone is safe, and the global community remains at risk so long as COVID-19 continues to spread and evolve. Participants hailed the importance of the GAP as a model for resolving gaps in future pandemic response.
They committed to remain engaged on the critical and timely work ahead and reconvene as needed to enhance action and coordination needed to better prepare for future health security threats, in a rapid, transparent, safe, secure, accountable, and equitable manner.
GAP partners welcomed international initiatives for better legal, financial, and coordination frameworks for pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response, and confirmed their commitment to building global consensus toward a safer world.
Read more: ‘World Bank should support countries hit hard by Covid-19, Russia-Ukraine war, climate change’
China reports 60,000 COVID-related deaths since early December
China on Saturday reported nearly 60,000 deaths in people who had COVID-19 since early December, offering hard numbers for an unprecedented surge that was apparent in overcrowded hospitals and packed crematoriums, even as the government released little data about the status of the pandemic for weeks.
Those numbers may still underestimate the toll, though the government said the “emergency peak" of its latest surge appears to have passed.
The toll included 5,503 deaths due to respiratory failure caused by COVID-19 and 54,435 fatalities from other ailments combined with COVID-19 since Dec. 8, the National Health Commission announced. It said those “deaths related to COVID” occurred in hospitals, which means anyone who died at home would not be included in the numbers.
The report would more than double China’s official COVID-19 death toll to 10,775 since the disease was first detected in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019. China has counted only deaths from pneumonia or respiratory failure in its official COVID-19 death toll, a narrow definition that excludes many deaths that would be attributed to COVID-19 in much of the world.
China stopped reporting data on COVID-19 deaths and infections after abruptly lifting anti-virus controls in early December despite a surge in infections that began in October and has filled hospitals with feverish, wheezing patients. Hospitals in Beijing across the country have been overwhelmed with patients, and funeral homes and crematoriums have struggled to handle the dead.
Read more: Bangladesh sees 10 more Covid cases, zero death
The World Health Organization and other governments appealed for information after reports by city and provincial governments suggested as many as hundreds of millions of people in China might have contracted the virus.
Infection numbers now appear to be falling based on a decline in the number of patients visiting fever clinics, said a National Health Commission official, Jiao Yahui.
The daily number of people going to those clinics peaked at 2.9 million on Dec. 23 and had fallen by 83% to to 477,000 on Thursday, according to Jiao.
“These data show the national emergency peak has passed,” Jiao said at a news conference.
Whether China truly has passed a COVID-19 peak is hard to assess, said Dr. Dale Bratzler, chief COVID officer at the University of Oklahoma and head of quality control at the university’s hospital.
“That’s difficult to know,” Bratzler said. “China quarantined people indoors, there are many people unvaccinated, the people are vulnerable.”
Dr. Albert Ko, an infectious disease physician and professor of public health at the Yale School of Public Health, said the number of COVID-19 deaths China is reporting may be a “significant underestimation” because of how they define them.
“They’re using a very narrow case definition for (COVID) deaths,” Ko said. “They have to have respiratory failure ... in order to be counted as a case you have to be at a place where they can say you fulfilled all the requirements, and that’s at a hospital.”
Hospitals in China, Ko said, are located mostly in large cities where COVID outbreaks have been reported, not in isolated rural areas.
“This is the Lunar New Year, people are traveling, going to the countryside where the population is vulnerable,” Ko said. “We’re really worried about what’s going to happen in China as this outbreak moves to the countryside.”
Read more: China halts visas for Japan, South Korea in COVID-19 spat
For nearly three years, China had kept its infection rate and deaths far lower than those of the United States and some other countries at the height of the pandemic with a “zero-COVID” strategy that aimed to isolate every case. That shut down access to some cities, kept millions of people at home and sparked angry protests.
Those rules were suddenly eased in early December after some of the largest shows of public dissent against the ruling Communist Party in more than 30 years. That set off new problems in a country that relies on domestically developed vaccines that are less reliable than others used globally, and where older people — those more susceptible to dying from the virus — are less likely to be vaccinated than the general population.
The Health Commission said the average age of people who died since Dec. 8 is 80.3 years, and 90.1% are aged 65 and above. It said more than 90% of people who died had cancer, heart or lung diseases or kidney problems.
“The number of elderly patients dying from illness is relatively large, which suggests that we should pay more attention to elderly patients and try our best to save their lives,” said Jiao.
The United States, South Korea, Japan and several other countries have imposed virus testing and other controls on people arriving from China. Beijing retaliated on Wednesday by suspending issuance of new visas to travelers from South Korea and Japan.
This month, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said agency officials met with Chinese officials to underline the importance of sharing more details about COVID-19 issues, including hospitalization rates and genetic sequences.
Bangladesh sees 10 more Covid cases, zero death
Bangladesh reported 10 more Covid cases in the 24 hours to Saturday morning.
With the new number, the country's total caseload rose to 2,037,356, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
However, the official death toll from the disease remained unchanged at 29,441 as no new fatalities were reported.
The daily case test positivity dropped to 0.50 percent from Friday's 0.51 percent as 2,012 samples were tested.
The mortality rate remained unchanged at 1.45 percent while the recovery rate rose to 97.65 percent.
Bangladesh reported its highest daily caseload of 16,230 on July 28 in 2021 and daily fatalities of 264 on August 5 of the same year.
Bangladesh reports 10 more Covid cases
Bangladesh reported 10 more Covid cases in the 24 hours to Friday morning.
With the new numbers, the country's total caseload rose to 2,037,240, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
However, the official death toll from the disease remained unchanged at 29,440 as no new fatalities were reported.
The daily case test positivity dropped to 0.39 percent from Thursday’s 0.46 percent as 2,596 samples were tested during the period.
The mortality rate and the recovery rate remained unchanged at 1.45 and 97.60 percent.
Read more: Bangladesh reports zero Covid death, 22 new cases
In December last year, the country reported seven Covid-linked deaths and 540 cases.
Bangladesh registered its highest daily caseload of 16,230 on July 28 in 2021 and daily fatalities of 264 on August 10 the same year.
Covid-19: Bangladesh reports 21 new cases
Bangladesh registered 21 more Covid cases in 24 hours till Wednesday morning.
With the new numbers, the country's total caseload rose to 2,037,208, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
However, the official death toll from the disease remained unchanged at 29,440 as no new fatalities were reported.
The daily case test positivity fell to 0.62 per cent from Tuesday's 0.74 per cent as 3,404 samples were tested during the period.
The mortality and recovery rates remained unchanged at 1.45 percent and 97.59 per cent, respectively, it added.
Also Read: Bangladesh logs 31 more Covid cases
In December last year, the country reported seven Covid-linked deaths and 540 cases.
Bangladesh registered its highest daily caseload of 16,230 on July 28 in 2021 and daily fatalities of 264 on August 5 the same year.
Bangladesh registers 21 more Covid cases, zero death
Bangladesh reported 21 more Covid cases in 24 hours till Wednesday morning.
With the new numbers, the country's total caseload rose to 2,036,866, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
However, the official death toll from the disease remained unchanged at 29,437 as no new fatalities were reported.
Read more: Bangladesh’s Covid-19 death toll stands at 2,668
The daily case test positivity rose to 0.78 percent from Tuesday's 0.69 percent as 2,700 samples were tested during the period.
The mortality and recovery rates remained unchanged at 1.45 percent and 97.53 percent, respectively.
Read more: Bangladesh sees another Covid death, 438 cases in 24hrs
In November, the country reported 10 Covid-linked deaths and 1,345 cases.
Bangladesh registered its highest daily caseload of 16,230 on July 28 last year and daily fatalities of 264 on August 10 the same year.
Bangladesh registers 19 more Covid cases in 24hrs
Bangladesh reported 19 more Covid cases in 24 hours till Friday morning.
With the new numbers, the caseload rose to 2,036,488, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
The total fatalities remained unchanged at 29,431 as no death was reported during this period.
The daily case test positivity dropped to 0.58 per cent from Thursday's 0.65 per cent as 3,258 samples were tested during the period.
Read: Global Covid cases near 644 million
The mortality and the recovery rates remained unchanged at 1.45 percent and 97.49 per cent, respectively.
In October, the country reported 60 Covid-linked deaths and 10,043 cases.
Bangladesh registered its highest daily caseload of 16,230 on July 28 last year and daily fatalities of 264 on August 10 the same year.
Global Covid cases near 644 million
The overall number of global Covid-19 cases is gradually nearing 644 million.
According to the latest global data, the total case count mounted to 643,874,295 while the death toll from the virus reached 6,629,034 on Wednesday morning.
The US has recorded 100,279,698 cases so far, while 1,103,355 people have died from the virus in the country, both highest counts around the world.
Read: COVID-19: US vaccine donations to Bangladesh exceed 100 million
India reported 294 new COVID-19 cases, official data showed on Tuesday.
The daily caseload was down from 406 cases the previous day, according to the federal health ministry data.
The country also logged five more COVID-19 related deaths, taking the death toll to 530,591 since the beginning of the pandemic, the ministry said.