How Covid-19 deaths in Bangladesh leap up
In the entire February month, some 281 people lost their battle against coronavirus, while the number increased to 638 in March
Bangladesh continued to see a steep rise in fatalities and fresh cases of Covid-19, with previous records apparently broken on a regular basis.
The daily death toll exceeded the 50th mark on 31 March for the first time this year and, except for some insignificant dips, it is now only going up.
On Monday, the country recorded an all-time high in deaths from coronavirus since the outbreak, as some 83 people succumbed to Covid-19 in a span of 24 hours till morning.
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It is most worrying that the deaths recorded in the last 12 days - 781 deaths - are 7.9% of all Covid deaths Bangladesh has recorded so far.
In the entire month of February, some 281 people lost their battle against coronavirus, and the number shot up more than twice that of February, to 638 in March.
If the increasing trend in deaths continues in the coming days, the country may have to face the scariest adversity in its history.
In the same 12 days, some 80,662 people were found to be infected with the highly contagious virus. The number is 11.7% of all Covid cases recorded in Bangladesh thus far.
No doubt the current situation is many times graver than in the same week of last month, and the same month of the previous year.
The steady uptick in coronavirus fatalities and deaths prompted the government to enforce a seven-day lockdown from April 5 but it apparently failed to rein in coronavirus infections.
However, the government extended the lockdown by two more days and announced the enforcement of a "strict seven-day lockdown" from April 14.
All sorts of public transport, including those of road, river, railway and air, will remain suspended during this period.
Alongside, the vaccination drive launched February 7 with vaccine doses received from the Serum Institute of India is underway.
Experts are calling for ramping up the drive and urging people to follow health guidelines to keep themselves and others around them safe.
On April 8, Bangladesh began its second phase of inoculation amid uncertainty over vaccine availability.
Coronavirus cases were first reported in China in December 2019. Since then, nearly 136 million cases worldwide have been confirmed until Monday with 2.9 million deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University (JHU).
