Dhaka, Feb 20 (UNB): Bangladesh recorded 350 more Covid-19 infections until early Saturday, meaning 543,024 people have now tested positive for the virus in the country since the start of the pandemic.
And the daily infection rate rose to 3.14%, which was 2.85% on Friday and 2.68% on Thursday.
Also, the country saw five new Covid-19 deaths, taking the national tally to 8,342. And the fatality rate stood at 1.54%, the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) said.
The overall infection rate stood at 13.80%. However, 490,892 patients – 90.40% – have recovered so far.
And 3,933,637 tests, including 11,148 new ones, have been carried out since the first cases were reported on March 8.
Vaccination in Bangladesh
The countrywide Covid-19 vaccination drive started on February 7.
Bangladesh inked an agreement with India’s Serum Institute India for 30 million doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. Serum will send 5 million doses each month between January and June.
Five million doses arrived in January and India gifted another two million doses as a gift.
So far, 2,082,877 people have received the first shot. After the first dose, the second one has to be taken within eight to 12 weeks.
Global Covid-19 Situation
The world has neared the grim milestone of 111 million Covid-19 cases.
The global case count reached 110,687,323 and the death toll from the virus mounted to 2,450,499 on Saturday morning, according to Johns Hopkins University.
The US has so far recorded 27,999,565 cases and 495,506 deaths. However, the country is vaccinating an average of 1.7 million people per day against Covid-19, up from under 1 million a month ago.
India’s Covid-19 tally rose to 10,963,394 and its death toll mounted to 156,111 on Friday.
Brazil registered 51,050 new Covid-19 infections and 1,308 deaths in the past 24 hours, raising the country’s national count to 10,084,208 and 244,737.
UN’s criticism of vaccine distribution
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres criticised the “wildly uneven and unfair” distribution of Covid-19 vaccines on Wednesday, saying, “Ten countries have administered 75% of all vaccines.”
The UN chief told a high-level meeting of the UN Security Council that 130 countries did not receive a single dose of vaccine and “at this critical moment, vaccine equity is the biggest moral test before the global community.”
