Global Covid cases near 219 million

The global Covid-19 caseload is now fast approaching 219 million, as the ferocious second wave of the corona pandemic continues to wreak havoc across the world amid mass inoculation efforts.

The total caseload and fatalities stand at 218, 969,254 and 4,550,984, respectively, as of Friday morning, according to Johns Hopkins University (JHU).

So far, 5, 370,416,172 vaccine doses have been administered across the globe.

The US, which is the world's worst-hit country in terms of both cases and deaths, has so far logged 39,944,270 cases. Besides, 643,594 people have lost their lives in the US to date, as per the JHU data.

The United States is surpassing an average of 160,000 new Covid-19 cases a day due to the spread of the more transmissible Delta variant.

Brazil currently has the world's second-highest pandemic death toll after the United States and the third-largest caseload after the United States and India.

The total caseload rose to 20,830,712 while the death toll stood at 582,004, as of Thursday.

India's Covid-19 tally rose to 32,902,345 on Thursday, while the death toll from the virus mounted to 439,916.

Daily new infections have fallen sharply in India since their peak of more than 400,000 in May.

Situation in Bangladesh

Bangladesh logged 88 Covid-19 deaths and 3,436 cases in 24 hours till Thursday morning, showing a slight upward trend from a day earlier.

Besides, the case positivity rate also increased slightly to 10.40 percent from last day's 10.11 percent, according to the Directorate General of Health Services.

Bangladesh logged 79 deaths and 3,062 new cases, respectively, on Tuesday morning.

The fresh numbers pushed the country's total fatalities to 26,362, while the cases reached 15.07,116, according to DGHS.

The country last saw 112 coronavirus-related deaths on June 29 and the upswing in the fatalities reached its peak on August 5 and 10 when 264 deaths were recorded.

The new cases were detected after testing 33,035 samples in 24 hours, said the DGHS.

However, the situation was much more catastrophic from June to the better part of August as the country experienced a surge in Covid caseload and deaths during that time.

Between May and June this year, there was a 273% rise in monthly caseloads and 162% in fatalities. In July, there was a 150% increase in caseloads and a 170% rise in deaths compared to the previous month, according to the World Health Organization.