Covid death toll crosses 20,000-mark

As the highly transmissible Delta variant keeps sweeping through the country, Bangladesh recorded 237 deaths from Covid-19 in 24 hours till yesterday morning, taking the death toll to 20,016.

The country has been seeing nearly 200 deaths a day for the past two weeks, and shattered the records of daily cases and deaths almost every other day.

Besides, 16,230 more people came out Covid positive after the test of 53,877 samples, according to a handout issued by the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).

This is the highest-ever single-day transmission after the country saw the largest-ever 15,192 Covid cases on Monday.

With the new numbers, the caseload mounted to 1,210,982.

Meanwhile, the daily positivity rate increased to 30.12 percent from the previous day's 28.44 percent.

However, the death rate declined to 1.65 percent during the period after increasing to 1.66 percent for a few days, said the DGHS.

The recovery rate dropped slightly to 85.54 percent from the previous day's 85.58 percent with 13,470 patients recovering during the 24-hour period.

Dhaka division recorded the highest 70 deaths, followed by 62 in Chattogram, 34 in Khulna, 21 in Rajshahi, 18 in Sylhet, 16 in Rangpur, nine in Barishal, and seven in Mymensingh divisions.

Of them, 149 were men and 88 women.

Of the deceased, nine were aged between 21 and 30; 11 between 31 and 40; 34 between 41 and 50; 44 between 51 and 60; 78 between 61 and 70; 45 between 71 and 80; 15 between 81 and 90; and one was within 91-100 years.