FBD Desk:

Bangladesh reported 1,699 new Covid-19 cases in 24 hours until Tuesday, raising the caseload to 423,620.Besides, 16 more patients died from the virus infection during the period which took the fatalities to 6,108.The death rate stood at 1.44 percent, said the Directorate General of Health Services.So far, 341,416 patients — 80.59 percent — including 1,648 new ones in the last 24 hours have recovered.

Bangladesh reported its first cases on March 8. The infection number reached the 300,000-mark on August 26. The first death was reported on March 18 and the death toll exceeded 6,000 on November 4.

Until now, 2,470,164 tests have been carried out, including 13,520 new ones, and 17.15 percent of the patients turned out to be positive.

Bangladesh is seeing 2487.40 infections, 2004.72 recoveries, and 35.86 deaths per million.

As of now, 3,190 people have died in Dhaka division, 1,205 in Chattogram, 374 in Rajshahi, 480 in Khulna, 205 in Barishal, 256 in Sylhet, 270 in Rangpur, and 128 in Mymensingh.

Global situation:

The global Covid-19 caseload reached 50.8 million on Tuesday morning, according to Johns Hopkins University (JHU).More than 1,262,413 people have died so far since Covid-19 cases were first reported in China in December last year, the JHU data shows.

In the United States, more than 10 million cases have been reported with 238,202 deaths. The country registered 105,927 new cases with 457 fatalities on Monday.

Brazil’s nationwide count stood at 5,675,032 on Monday with a death toll of 162,628.

The Covid-19 pandemic continues to spread in Asia-Pacific countries as India’s tally reached 8,553,657 on Tuesday. The country’s death toll has reached 126,611.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the pace of the Covid-19 pandemic continued to pick up. It took just 20 days for the WHO tally to go from 40 million global cases — reported on Oct 20 — to 50 million.

Meanwhile, Pfizer says an early peek at its vaccine data suggests the shots may be 90 percent effective at preventing Covid-19, indicating the company is on track later this month to file an emergency use application with US regulators.

Monday’s announcement does not mean a vaccine is imminent: This interim analysis, from an independent data monitoring board, looked at 94 infections recorded so far in a study that has enrolled nearly 44,000 people in the US and five other countries.

Pfizer Inc did not provide any further details about those cases, and cautioned the initial protection rate might change by the time the study ends. Even revealing such early data is highly unusual.(Source: UNB)