Covid Positivity: Daily rate drops below 3 percent

The rate of daily positive coronavirus cases dropped to 2.92 percent yesterday, the lowest in more than nine months.

In 24 hours till 8:00am yesterday, a total of 14,985 tests were performed in 206 Covid-19 testing centres across the country and 438 tested positive for the virus.

Thirteen people died with the highly transmissible virus over the same period, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) press release.

Now the overall positivity rate stands at 14.53 percent.

Experts, however, said it was too early to say that the virus transmission was under control.

Assuming the transmission may go up anytime, they stressed on maintaining health rules.

The percentage of positive cases is a critical measure because it gives an indication of how widespread the infection is in the area where testing is occurring and whether levels of testing are keeping up with levels of disease transmission, according to John Hopkins University.

A high percentage of positive cases means that more testing should probably be done and it suggests that it is not a good time to relax restrictions aimed at reducing coronavirus transmission.

As a rule of thumb, the positivity rate is thought to be "too high" if it is more than five percent.

In May, the World Health Organization recommended that the positivity rate should be below five percent for at least two weeks before governments considered reopening.

Referring to the WHO, the Health Minister Zahid Maleque said on Tuesday, "The positivity rate has been near three percent for many days. We are in a good situation and we have to try maintaining it."

Mushtuq Hussain, consultant of the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) told The Daily Star yesterday, "The current positivity rate doesn't mean the transmission is under control. In fact, community transmission is ongoing and it may go up anytime as like as we observed in many countries."

He said there is no alternative to wearing masks, washing hands frequently and maintain physical distance.

Prof Ridwanur Rahman, an infectious disease specialist also echoed him.

With the latest figure, the total number of confirmed cases rose to 536,545, according to the press release.

And the total number of deaths reached 8,162 which is 1.52 percent of all confirmed cases.

In those 24 hours, a total of 578 Covid-19 patients recovered from their illnesses, raising the total number of recoveries to 481,306.

With this, the recovery rate stands at 89.70 percent.

Among the 13 deceased, 11 were males.