72pc hospital beds lying vacant

Although people are dying with Covid-19 and new cases are being detected everyday, over 72 percent of hospital beds for the infected patients are vacant across the country, according to officials.

About two-thirds of the beds have been consistently remaining unused for over a month.

With 1,973 new detections yesterday, the total number of active cases rose to 1,15,507.

Only 4,248 of them were undergoing treatment in hospital beds and 335 were in ICUs as of yesterday, according to the health directorate data.

The government facilities have a total of 15,255 general and 545 ICU beds for Covid-19 patients.

Meanwhile, the positivity rate has fallen below 19 percent for the first time in over two months.

The highest positivity rate was 25.23 percent on July 15.

Positivity rate refers to the percentage of people who test positive for the virus of those overall who have been tested.

During last week, this rate was below 20 percent on average.

In the 24 hours until 8:30am yesterday, 34 patients were reported dead.

Total number of confirmed cases was 2,94,598 yesterday.

Bangladesh was 16th in the list of worst affected countries in the world in terms of the number of confirmed cases, according to worldometers.info.

Of all confirmed patients, nearly 61 percent have recovered.

According to officials, 10 of the yesterday's deceased were females while 24 were males and 31 of them died in hospitals and the rest at home.

One of them was aged between 21 and 30 years, three from 31-40, two from 41-50, six from 51-60 and 22 were from 60-70.

One was from Barishal division, two from Rangpur, four each from Rajshahi and Sylhet, five from Chattogram and 18 from Dhaka.

At least 573 people were newly placed in isolation with symptoms, taking the total to 20,619.