Covid on the rise: 159 cases in 24 hours

The Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) reported 159 Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours till 8:00am today.

This is the highest number of cases recorded in a day since November 3 last year when 140 cases were reported, according to the DGHS Covid-19 dashboard. Since then, the number of daily cases decreased below 100.

The positivity rate was 5.13 percent against 3,099 samples in the same 24 hours yesterday.

The highest 53 of all the positive cases were detected at National Institute of Laboratory Medicine and Referral Center (NILMRC) in Dhaka.

"We are getting higher positivity rate in the past couple of days. It highlights that the novel coronavirus has started infecting more people again," Dr Arifa Akram, Assistant professor of virology at the NILMRC told The Daily Star.

"We now can treat it as normal flu. But caution should be taken for vulnerable people," she said, adding, "Wearing mask and washing hand are always useful for health."

No Covid-19 related death was reported in the last 24 hours.

So far, around 2,039,130 Covid-19 cases were detected in the country since the first three cases were reported on March 8 in 2020.

In this period, Covid-19 has claimed 29,446 lives in the country.