COVID-19 death toll crosses 10,000 in Bangladesh

The country’s COVID-19 death toll has crossed 10,000 as 190 more people died of coronavirus infections in the past two days.

Directorate General of Health Services data said that COVID-19 claimed the lives of 96 people on Wednesday and 94 on Thursday, taking the total death toll to 10,081 since the first cases of coronavirus detected in the country on March 8, 2020.

Health experts said that although the test positivity rate in the past few days remained almost similar to June-July in 2020 when COVID-19 peaked for the first time, the number of daily deaths now is much higher.

More aggressive and fatal South African variant of the coronavirus is most likely causing more deaths, they said.

The country tallied last 1,000 deaths in just 15 days although it took 66 days to record the previous 1,000 deaths. 

‘The South African variant of the coronavirus is most likely the reason behind the high number of deaths this year,’ said Mugda Medical College principal Ahmedul Kabir, also an editorial board member of the National Guidelines on Clinical Management of COVID-19.

A joint study of the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research and the ICDDR,B has recently found the South African coronavirus variant in over 80 per cent of the infected people.

‘It is evident that the South African variant, which is known to be more aggressive and fatal, is heavily present in the country and we are afraid that the virus is gaining more power after mutating in the local environment,’ Ahmedul said.

The IEDCR principal scientific officer, ASM Alamgir, said that the South African variant might be a reason behind the deaths this year but the number of detected people increased this year due to the increased number of tests, helping to identify the cause of the deaths.

He said that many people died with COVID-19 symptoms in the past year and about 20 per cent of them might have infected with COVID-19 given that the test positivity rate in the country was also around 20 per cent in the past year.

‘They are being counted this year,’ Alamgir observed.

Overall, the country’s COVID-19 fatality rate has remained at 1.43 per cent, which is lower than the global rate of around 3 per cent, he said.

In recent days, the deaths outside hospitals have also increased.

On Thursday, four people died of COVID-19 at home.

In the past five days, at least 22 people died at home or on the way to hospitals.

Directorate General of Health Services spokesperson Robed Amin on Tuesday said that due to a lack of intensive care unit facilities in hospitals, many COVID-19 patients were dying at home.

He recommended that elderly COVID-19 patients and those who have comorbidities should not stay at home, rather they should get hospitalised, even in general wards, just after they got the test report confirming that they had tested positive for the coronavirus.

The DGHS in its daily update on Thursday said that 4,192 people were detected with the coronavirus in the past 24 hours ending at 8:00am on Thursday, raising the number of cases to 7,07,362 in the country.

The test positivity rate was 21 per cent as 19,959 samples were tested in the past 24 hours across the country.

News Courtesy:

https://www.newagebd.net/article/135415/covid-19-death-toll-crosses-10000-in-bangladesh