Covid-19 Hospitals: Three in city to close services

Due to the declining number of Covid-19 patients, the government has decided three designated hospitals in the capital would no longer treat such patients.

The hospitals are Dhaka Mohanagar Hospital, Lalkuthi Hospital and Bashundhara Covid-19 hospitals, according to a circular signed by Bilkis Begum, deputy secretary of the health minister.

"It is requested as per an order to start treatment of general patients in those hospitals, due to having no or a very few Covid-19 patients," the circular said.

As of yesterday noon, there were only 29 patients against 66 general beds in Mohanagar Hospital, one against 121 in Lalkuthi Hospital and 11 against 2,013 beds in Bashundhara hospital, says a press release from the health directorate.

Among them, only Lalkuthi Hospital had five ICU beds.

The health directorate also reported there were a total of 14, 275 general beds and 547 ICUs in Covid-19-dedicated hospitals across the country.

Of those, 6,107 general beds and 307 ICU beds were in the capital.

Meanwhile, the health directorate reported 1,593 new cases of Covid-19 till 8:30am yesterday.

The positivity rate stood at 11.65 percent against 13,673 people tested for Covid 19.

A day before, the positivity rate was 12.09 percent while the overall positivity rate remained the same at 19.3 percent.

With this, the total number of people tested positive since January 21 rose to 344,264, according to a press release from the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).

Additional 36 patients have died raising the death toll to 4,859 and taking the death rate to 1.43 percent.

With 2,443 patients recovering in those 24 hours, the total number of recovered cases now stands at 250,412 which takes the recovery rate close to 73 percent.

Eight of the newly deceased were females and 28 were males. Two of them died at their homes and 34 in hospitals, added the press release.

Among the deceased, two were aged between 21 and 30, one was between 31 and 40, five were between 41 and 50, seven between 51 and 60, and the highest 21 were over 60 years old.

So far, more than 50 percent of the deceased were aged over 60.

Each of the deceased was from Rangpur and Sylhet divisions, two were from Khulna, three from Barisal, four from Rajshahi, five from Chattogram and 20 were from Dhaka division.