Bangladesh has overtaken the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) too in terms of the number of coronavirus infections to emerge as the world's 14th largest hotspot.
With 2,582 new cases recorded in the last 24 hours ending on Wednesday noon, the country's coronavirus caseload reached 317,528, taking Bangladesh over the middle-east Asian hotspot in the global standings, according to Worldometer info on coronavirus.
The website that provides real-time coronavirus statistics said the KSA has a total of 316,670 confirmed cases along with 3,929 deaths as of September 02.
It is the sixth major global coronavirus hotspot that Bangladesh crossed over in less than two months. The other hotspots were Germany, Italy, Turkey, France and Pakistan.
Overtaking Saudi Arabia, the small but densely populated country in South Asia emerged as the third most coronavirus infected nation in Asia, after India and Iran.
On the 177th day since detection of the first coronavirus case on March 8, the number of COVID-19 tests reached 15,77,616 and the total infection rate stood at 20.13 per cent, according to the state-run Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
The DGHS, on Wednesday's coronavirus bulletin, said a total of 15,204 samples were tested across the country since Tuesday noon.
Of the tests, some 2,582 samples were found COVID-19 positive along with 35 more deaths recorded across the country during the period, it mentioned.
"With these numbers, the overall tally of confirmed cases and deaths rose to 317,528 and 4,351 respectively," added the bulletin, signed by DGHS additional director general Dr Nasima Sultana.
Of the total deaths, 48.38 per cent was recorded in Dhaka division, followed by Chattogram (21.67 per cent), Khulna (8.34 per cent), Rajshahi (6.69 per cent), Sylhet (4.46 per cent), Rangpur (4.46 per cent), Barishal (3.88 per cent), and Mymensingh (2.11 per cent).
At the same time, the DGHS data also mentioned that 2,839 more patients recovered, taking the entire tally of recovery to 211,016. The recovery rate rose to 66.46 per cent.
Globally, over 25.9 million people have been infected by the novel coronavirus, and 861,706 have died until Wednesday 4:45 pm, according to Worldometer info.
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