Health Desk – 28 Mar, 2021: The number of new Covid-19 cases has increased by 85 percent while the deaths have increased by 42.5 percent in the last seven days compared to the previous week.
Meanwhile, the health directorate reported 39 deaths in the 24 hours ending at 8:00am yesterday — the highest in the last three and half months.
According to Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) data, a total of 201 Covid-19 patients died in seven days ending yesterday while the number of casualties was 141 the week before.
Meanwhile, the total number of new confirmed cases was 23,100 in the same time period, while it was 12,470 in the previous week.
Yesterday, a total of 34,664 samples were tested for Covid-19 across the country. Of those, 14.90 percent (3,674) were positive. This positivity rate was also higher than the previous day’s 13.69 percent.
With the latest count, the total number of Covid-19 deaths has risen to 8,869 and the total number of confirmed cases to 5,91,806.
At least 5,33,922 people have recovered from the disease so far.
Amid the rapid transmission of the lethal virus that began a global pandemic, hospitals are also struggling with the rising number of critical patients.
“It is very clear the transmission trend is sharp upward and it is rising steeply — faster than the trend during March-April last year. The pace of the rising transmission is alarming,” Dr Mushtuq Hussain, consultant of the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) said yesterday.
He said it is urgent to detect infected cases, isolate them and ensure that everyone is maintaining health safety guidelines, which are not being maintained.
“Unless active measures like those of last November and December are taken, the transmission will continue rising,” he added.
Prof Ridwanur Rahman, an infectious disease specialist, said “With the rising number of patients, hospitals are now overburdened. Unless we implement transmission control measures actively, it is not possible to reduce burden on the hospitals.”
As of 12:00pm yesterday, only five ICU beds out of the 103 in 10 government Covid-19 dedicated hospitals or units in Dhaka city were vacant.
In the nine private Covid-19 hospitals in the capital, a total of 45 ICU beds out of 188 were empty.
According to the DGHS, there are 574 ICU beds across the country.
Across the country, a total of 348 Covid-19 patients were undergoing treatment in ICUs.
Of those who died yesterday, 24 were males and 15 were females.
Three of them were aged between 31 and 40, one between 41 and 50, ten between 51 and 60 and 25 were above 60.
Experts apprehended that the transmission will continue rising in the coming days thanks to people not maintaining health safety guidelines.
Since the DGHS reported the first three cases on March 8 last year, the novel coronavirus infection reached its first peak in June and declined in October last year.
Later in November and December, the country saw an upward trend, which came to the lowest during January and February.
Since March 9, it continued rising again.
