Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University authorities have slowed down the expansion of their Covid-19 field hospital as fewer new cases are being detected in recent days.

Officials yesterday reported 159 deaths of patients confirmed to have Covid-19, the lowest in the past one and a half months.

The BSMMU launched Bangamata Sheikh Fazilatunnesa Mujib Covid-19 Field Hospital with 356 beds on August 7. There are 20 beds at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and 20 beds at the High Dependency Unit (HDU) at the facility which has central oxygen supply system.

Health officials earlier said there would be a total of 1,000 beds at the hospital.

But Prof Debabrata Banik, coordinator of the field hospital, yesterday said the expansion work has been slowed down because the infection rate has dropped.

He told The Daily Star that the plan now is to increase the number of beds to 500 instead of 1,000.

According to the Directorate General of Health Services, the number of Covid-19 patients has declined in different Covid-19 hospitals across the country.

Yesterday, the general bed occupancy declined to 39 percent from 69 percent on July 13. The ICU bed occupancy rate declined to 70 percent from 90 percent on July 30.

"The number of Covid-19 patients has been declining because there were some restrictions before August 11. With everything reopening, there is a risk of another rise," Dr Abu Jamil Faisel, member of the Epidemiology and Public Health Committee of the DGHS, told The Daily Star yesterday.

Since August 2, the positivity rate has been declining steadily, with 17.64 percent recorded yesterday, the lowest in the past two months.

As the Delta variant of coronavirus spread across the country the positivity rate jumped to 33 percent on July 24.

Yesterday, the DGHS reported 6,566 new cases, taking the total confirmed cases to 14,47,210.

With the latest count, the total number of deaths rose to 24,878.

Of those reported dead yesterday, 76 were male and 83 female. Fifty of them were in Dhaka, 38 in Chattogram, 23 in Sylhet, 13 in Rajshahi, 12 in Khulna, 10 in Barishal, eight in Rangpur and five in Mymensingh divisions.