Deaths from Covid-19 cross 10,000-mark

The number of Covid-19 deaths in the country has passed the 10,000 mark, with the health directorate reporting 94 new deaths in the past 24 hours till 8:00am yesterday.

The highest number of deaths – 96 -- was reported just the day before.

With this, the total number of Covid-19 deaths now stands at 10,081, which is 1.43 percent of all cases detected in the country since the first three reported on March 8 last year.

After the coronavirus infection decreased to its lowest in January and February, it started rising from the second week of March and continued breaking previous records frequently.

On March 31, the total death toll crossed the 9,000 mark from the 8000 in 67 days. But it took only 15 days to reach the latest milestone figure or 10,000.

Experts said the number of deaths seems to proportionately increase two weeks after the rise in infection rate.

In late March and early April, the number of detections was on top with frequent new records.

Over the last few days, the number of detections has slightly decreased while the positivity rate has remained stagnant near 20 percent.

"We are observing a higher number of deaths as the infection rate was higher a week ago. As health safety guidelines are in effect now, the transmission and deaths will hopefully decrease in the coming days. If not, there will be the need of a stricter lockdown," Dr Mushtuq Hussain, consultant of the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR), told The Daily Star recently.

Meanwhile in the last 24 hours, 4,192 new patients tested positive. With this, the total number of confirmed cases rose to 707,362.‎

Against a total of 19,959 tests in those 24 hours, the positivity rate was 21 percent, which was 18.29 percent against 32,955 tests.

The positivity rate is an important parameter to measure the level of virus transmission.

According to the World Health Organization, the transmission will be considered under control if the positivity rate remains stagnant below five percent continuously for at least two weeks.

After the second spike in November and December last year, the positivity rate started to going down from January. Throughout February, this rate was below three percent but it started rising in early March.

In the same 24 hour period, 5,915 patients recovered from their illnesses, raising the number of recoveries to 5,97,214 -- more than 84 percent of all cases detected so far.