Staff Correspondent: Dhaka, Aug-19,
The global Covid-19
caseload has now surged past 209 million as the highly contagious Delta variant
continues to devastate several countries even with mass inoculations underway.
The total caseload and
fatalities stand at 209,222,017 and 4,392,130 respectively, as of Thursday
morning, according to Johns Hopkins University (JHU).
So far, 4,787,668, 861
vaccine doses have been administered across the globe.
More than 4.4 million
Covid cases and 66,000 deaths were reported worldwide in the past week, the
World Health Organization (WHO) announced Wednesday.
The number of new
infections in seven days surpassed last week's number by 2%, while the
mortality rate was roughly flat, the UN agency added.
A total of 4,444,632
people were infected with Covid-19 across the world and 66,506 patients died
from August 9 to 15.
As of August 18, some
208,833,116 coronavirus cases had been recorded in nearly 200 countries. Since
the start of the pandemic, the Covid-19 death toll has reached 4,386,814.
So far, the US, India
and Brazil have seen the highest number of confirmed cases and fatalities.
The US, which is the
world's worst-hit country in terms of both cases and deaths, has so far logged
37,148,877 Covid cases. Besides, 624,209 people have lost their lives in the US
to date, as per the JHU data.
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 country has
recorded 20,457,897 cases with 571,662 fatalities so far, according to the
health ministry.
The third worst-hit
country, India's Covid-19 tally rose to 32,285,857 on Wednesday, as 35,178 new
cases were registered during the past 24 hours across the country, according to
the federal health ministry.
Besides, as many as 440
deaths due to the pandemic since Monday morning took the total death toll to 432,519.
Situation in Bangladesh
Bangladesh reported 172
more coronavirus-related deaths and 7,248 fresh infections in 24 hours till
Wednesday morning as concerns remain over the virulent Delta variant of the
virus.
The country has been
seeing fatalities below 200 for the last six days, a slight improvement from
the July 25-August 13 period when daily deaths were recorded over 200.
The fresh numbers took
the country’s total fatalities to 24,719 and the cases to 1,440,644, according
to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS)
The new cases were
detected after testing 41,014 samples,
which lowered the case positivity rate to 17.67 % from Tuesday’s 19.18%, still
much higher than the WHO recommendation of bringing it below 5%.
Meanwhile, the case
fatality rate has increased to 1.72% after staying unchanged at 1.71% for some
days.
End/Dct/Rak/Sma/
