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Bangladesh's coronavirus deaths have surpassed 2,300 and cases reached 181,129, as the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) reported 30 deaths and 2,686 cases on Saturday.
The new deaths bring the country’s virus toll to 2,305, the DGHS said while briefing the media live about the latest coronavirus situation in the country at 2:30pm.
It also confirmed 1,628 recoveries from the contagion in the 24 hours to 8:00am, taking the total recovery tally to 88,034.
The virtual briefing was also told that 11,193 tests were conducted during the last 24 hours under review, taking the total count to 929,465.
Bangladesh first confirmed its coronavirus cases and death on March 08 and March 18 respectively, and since March 26 it enforced a 66-day shutdown in parallel with general holidays.
But that shutdown did little to slow the coronavirus spread as numbers of cases continued to increase.
Records show that Bangladesh in March conducted 1,602 tests and confirmed 51 cases, five deaths and 25 recoveries while in April it was 63,064 tests, 7,616 cases, 163 deaths and 135 recoveries.
In May the country carried out 244,264 tests and confirmed 39,486 cases, 482 deaths and 9,621 recoveries while in June, it was 460,530 tests, 98,330 cases, 1,197 deaths and 49,843 recoveries.
And this July has so far witnessed 163,005 tests, 35,646 cases, 458 deaths and 28,410 recoveries.
Bangladesh has since June 05 become one of the 20 largest coronavirus outbreaks in the world, overtaking the then European hotspot of Belgium as the 20th worst affected country.
Currently, in South Asia, only Pakistan and India have more cases, while globally, 16 countries, including those two, have more cases than Bangladesh.
Still, according to Reuters, some observers fear the contagion is under-reported in densely populated, impoverished Bangladesh. It has almost three times Italy's population but has done far fewer tests.
In terms of coronavirus tests, Bangladesh now fares the second worst in the sub-continent, after Afghanistan.
According to the FE newspaper, Bangladesh coronavirus tests have witnessed a downward trend as the government recently imposed fees on such tests to avoid ‘unnecessary’ tests.
However, knowledgeable circles partially attribute the downward trend in coronavirus tests to shortage of test kits.
Whatever the reason for the falling trend in the coronavirus tests may be, health professionals warn that such trend will not help the authorities understand the real pandemic scenario in the country.
Globally, 12,642,686 people have caught coronavirus, 563,173 died and 7,379,411 recovered as of 2:49 pm, with the US becoming the worst-hit country with 3,291,786 cases and 136,671 deaths, according to the worldometer.info.