Covid onslaught continues: 185 more die; 8,772 new cases

Corona virus

Dhaka, July 10 – Passing through a catastrophic phase of Covid-19 pandemic, Bangladesh reported 185 more coronavirus-related deaths and 8,772 new cases in 24 hours till Saturday morning.
The new numbers pushed the country’s death tally to 16,189 while the caseload to 10,09,315, according to a handout issued by the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
Bangladesh already crossed the 1-million mark of Covid cases on Thursday.
The new infections were detected after testing 27,884 samples during the period. This takes the daily case positivity rate to 31.46% from Friday’s 31.62, said the DGHS.
However, the case fatality rate remained unchanged at 1.60 during the period.
So far, 868,139 people have recovered from the disease, putting the recovery rate at 86.01% a declining indicator, unlike others.
Bangladesh has been seeing above 10,000 Covid cases on average for the last seven days as the second wave of the Coronavirus continues to play havoc.
Dhaka division, the worst-hit region, reported 70 of the deaths today while Khulna the newly-emerged hotspot saw 51 deaths. Besides 20 people died in Chattogram, 13 in Rajshahi, 11 in Rangpur, 10 in Barishal, seven in Sylhet and three in Mymensingh divisions during the period.
Vaccination drive
The government has so far approved the emergency use of Oxford-AstraZeneca, Sinopharm (China), Sputnik-V (Russia), Pfizer-BioNTech (USA/Germany), Crona Vac (China) and Janssen single-dose vaccines.
Amid the deteriorating coronavirus situation, the government resumed the countrywide mass registration for receiving Covid-19 jabs on July 8, which remained suspended for around three months as vaccine procurement became unsure.
Bangladesh is currently administering the doses of Sinopharm vaccine and Pfizer BioNTech vaccine and also the second dose of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.
As of now, 162,513 people received the first dose of China’s Sinopharm vaccine, and 2,237 have received the second dose of it.
Meanwhile, 15,698 people have received the first jab of Pfizer vaccine, including 5,925 in the past 24 hours.
Of the Astrazeneca vaccine doses, 4,294,911 received the second shot and 5,820,023 the first one so far.
Vaccine procurement update
Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen on Wednesday said Bangladesh is hopeful of receiving more vaccine doses this month from Japan, the European Union (EU) and the USA under COVAX facility apart from a steady flow of that from China.
Dr Momen said Bangladesh is expected to get around 2.5 million doses of vaccine from Japan while 1 million from the EU under the COVAX facility. “These’re likely to be AstraZeneca vaccine doses.”
The Foreign Minister said he talked to the Japanese Foreign Minister recently and Bangladesh mentioned Japan’s vaccine supply to others.
Dr Momen said Japan will provide vaccine doses to Bangladesh, too but the exact quantity was not mentioned. But a big quantity of vaccine doses is expected to arrive this week or next week under the COVAX facility. “We expect it’ll be around 2.5 million doses.”
Meanwhile, Health Minister Zahid Maleque today said Bangladesh will receive 60 lakh more doses of Pfizer vaccine from COVAX facility by early August.
Minister Maleque said the World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed the vaccine delivery information on Friday through a letter.
“By the end of July or at the beginning of August, we’ll receive 50 lakh doses of Covid-19 vaccine from China, too,” Zahid Maleque added.  
“We’re hopeful of having 1 to 1.5 crore doses of vaccines in our stock within one and a half months. More vaccines will be coming in August,” he said. - UNB