Surge of new cases continue

The number of daily new cases of Covid-19 set another record yesterday with officials reporting 13,768 detections.

The positivity rate jumped to 31 percent from 29 percent of the previous day.

Except Saturday, the daily case detection has consistently been over 11,000 since July 6.

At least 220 deaths from Covid-19 were reported in the 24 hours ending 8:00am yesterday. The number was 230 the previous day.

With the latest count, the total number of deaths caused by the pathogen is 16,639, around 1.6 percent of all cases detected.

The current caseload is over 1.4 lakh and more than 5,000 are in hospitals across the country.

Of those reported dead yesterday, 64 were in Dhaka, 55 in Khulna, 37 in Chattogram, 23 in Rajshahi, 18 in Rangpur, 13 in Mymensingh, six in Sylhet, and four in Barishal divisions.

Of them, 142 were male and 121 were aged above 60. Thirteen of them died at home.

For more than a month, Khulna and Rajshahi divisions were the hotspots of the Delta variant of Covid-19. The situation worsened across the country over the last one week, especially in Rangpur and Chattogram divisions.

A majority of the patients are going to hospitals in critical condition, health officials said. This has strained the intensive care units and the high dependency units of hospitals.

As of yesterday noon, only 275 ICU beds out of 1,263 were vacant in 139 Covid hospitals nationwide.

In the Mymensingh division, the bed occupancy in Covid-19 hospitals yesterday was more than 111 percent.