18 more die, 1,320 test positive

Eighteen people have died from Covid-19 in the country during the 24 hours ending at 8:00am yesterday, said a press release.

With this, the total number of deaths has reached 5,923.

This is 1.45 percent of all confirmed cases of novel coronavirus infection in the country, said the press release from the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).

A total of 1,320 new infections were recorded in the same 24 hours taking the total number of people infected to 4,07,684.

Bangladesh is the 18th country in the world in terms of the total number of novel coronavirus infections, according to worldometers.info.

This position is one step behind Indonesia and one spot ahead of Belgium.

Against a total of 11,532 tests in the 24 hours, the positivity rate was 11.45 percent which indicates, according to experts, the transmission is still not under control.

For nearly a month, the daily positivity rate has remained around 12 percent.

"The daily positivity rate reflects that the transmission neither increasing nor decreasing. If it rises again, we will say further rise of the transmission, not second wave. Second wave means rise of transmission again after it was under control," Prof Nazrul Islam, member of the National Technical Advisory Committee (NTAC) told the Daily Star last week.

With this, the overall positivity rate is 17.45 percent.

Meanwhile, 1,442 Covid-19 patients have recovered in the 24 hours, raising the total number of recoveries to 3,24,145.

This is more than 80 percent of all confirmed cases.

Among the 18 deceased, 12 were males.

All of them died in hospitals, according to the press release.

Four of them were aged between 41 and 50 years, three between 51 and 60, and 11 others were above 60 years old, added the release.

One was from Sylhet division, two each was from Khulna and Chattogram divisions, and the rest 13 were from Dhaka division.