Covid positivity rate drops to 8-month low

The rate of daily positive coronavirus cases dropped yesterday to 8.6 percent, the lowest it has been in more than eight months, while the recovery rate continued to increase.

In 24 hours ending at 8:00am yesterday, a total of 13,191 tests were performed in 140 Covid-19 testing centres across the country and 1,134 tested positive for the virus. Thirty-six people died with the highly transmissible virus over the same period

The previous lowest daily positivity rate was on April 10, when 7.93 percent of 1,184 samples tested positive for Covid-19.

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.

"Although the positivity rate was decreasing in the last several days, it may rise at any time. In fact, the transmission will show both rising and decreasing trends in the coming days, as we observed during higher [rates of] transmission earlier (May-July)," Mushtuq Hussain, consultant of the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) told The Daily Star yesterday.

Since the first three confirmed cases were reported on March 8 in the country, the transmission of Covid-19 was highest between June and July.

The highest daily positivity rate of 31.91 was recorded on August 3. It remained stagnant around 12 percent throughout September and October.

From November, however, it started rising again.

Yesterday's infections took the total number of cases in the country to 4,96,975.

In the same 24 hours, 2,239 patients recovered from their illnesses raising the total number of recoveries to 4,31,590. This is 86.84 percent of all confirmed cases, up from 86.59 the previous day.

The number of deaths from Covid-19 was 36 over the 24-hour period, which is higher than the previous day's deaths -- 27.

The total number of Covid-19 deaths in the country now stands at 7,192, which is 1.44 percent of all confirmed cases.

Among the 36 deceased, 27 were male.

One of them was aged between 31 and 40 years, two between 41 and 50, four between 51 and 60, and 29 were above 60 years, added the release.