FE REPORT
The uptrend in the number of coronavirus infections continues as 512 more people tested positive for Covid-19 in the last 24 hours ending on Friday morning.
The tallies in the daily caseload in the previous days (December 30, 29, 28, 27 and 26) were 509, 495, 397, 373 and 268 respectively.
This gradual rise in infections triggers concern among healthcare professionals who earlier warned against complacency as many countries are seeing a surge in infections yet again.
During the period under review, Covid-19 took two more lives countrywide, taking the death toll to 28,072.
In terms of deaths per division, Dhaka and Khulna logged one fatality each.
Of the new cases, according to Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), some 417 are in Dhaka and the total caseload now stands at 1,585,539.
With fresh detections after testing 18,673 samples, the daily test positivity rate jumped to 2.74 per cent from Thursday's 2.25 per cent.
The health authorities also reported the recovery of 290 cases from Covid-19 across the country during the period, taking the total recoveries to 1,549,101.
In another development, the government launches today a countrywide special campaign up to ward level to inoculate 30-million people with Covid-19 vaccine.
"We've planned to continue the special campaign initially through January," DGHS director general Prof ABM Khurshid Alam tells the FE.
He says the campaign will be held at each EPI centre to further accelerate vaccination activity in order to cover at least 80 per cent of the population. Bangladesh has so far inoculated an estimated 30 per cent of its citizens.
Meanwhile, bdnews24.com reports that three more cases of the Omicron variant have been found afresh, bringing the tally of infections from the new strain to 10.
Germany's Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID) announced the new cases on Friday.
Among the new cases, two are women aged 65 and 49 while the other is a 65-year-old man. All of them are residents of Dhaka, according to GISAID.
Their samples were collected on December 27 for genome sequencing by the Institute of Developing Science And Health Initiative. They were later submitted to GISAID.
Bangladesh detected its first cases of omicron in two women cricketers, who returned from Zimbabwe.
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