Citizen Times Desk: Dhaka, Aug-02

The overall number of global Covid cases surpassed the 198-million mark as different countries continue their battle against deadlier variants of coronavirus amid slow vaccination rate.

Although the situation in Europe is improving, globally it is worsening as the Delta variant of Covid-19 has now been detected in 124 territories worldwide, says the World Health Organization (WHO).

According to the US-based Johns Hopkins University (JHU), the total case count reached 198,283,776 while the death toll from the virus stood at 4,224,015 on Monday morning.

So far, 4,112,844,213 vaccine doses have been administered across the world.

The US, which is the world's worst-hit country in terms of both cases and deaths, has so far logged 35,001,589 cases. Besides, 613,223 people have lost their lives in the US to date, as per the JHU data.

Brazil registered 464 more COVID-19 deaths in the past 24 hours, raising its national death toll to 556,834, the health ministry said on Sunday.

Meanwhile, the total caseload rose to 19,938,358 with detection of 20,503 new cases.

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 South American country is experiencing a new wave of infections, which has overwhelmed hospitals, said the ministry.

India's COVID-19 tally rose to 31,655,824 on Sunday as 41,831 new cases were registered during the past 24 hours across the country, showed the federal health ministry's latest data.

As many as 541 deaths were recorded since Saturday morning, taking the death toll to 424,351.

Situation in Bangladesh

With the Delta variant of Covid-19 tearing through Bangladesh, the country reported 231 more deaths in 24 hours till Sunday morning.

Besides, 14,844 people came out positive for the virus after the test of 49,529 samples, said a handout issued by the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).

It said the fresh cases took Bangladesh’s total fatality to 20,916 while the caseload to 1,264,328.

Meanwhile, the daily test positivity rate marked a negligible fall to 29.97% from Saturday’s 30.24 %, while the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends a 5% or below rate.

However, the recovery rate rose to 86.47% from the previous day’s 86.29 % and the case fatality rate fell to 1.65% from last day’s 1.66 %, said the DGHS media release.

During the 24-hour period, 15,054 patients recovered from the fatal disease.

Logging highest 6,182 deaths and 336,226 new cases, July has become the most fatal month since the reporting of first Covid cases in the country in March, 2020.

End/Dct/Sma/