Staff Correspondent

Compared to the previous week, deaths due to Covid-19 has increased by around 71 percent and transmission of novel coronavirus continued to surge.

To stop the upsurge, experts said there was no alternative to ensuring everyone wears a mask and maintains physical distancing.

At least 58 Covid-19 patients died yesterday, taking the death toll of the week to 344, up from the previous week’s (March 21-27) of 201 patients.

The number of new cases has also risen by more than 66 percent during the same period, according to a Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) press release.

This week, a total of 38,471 patients were detected while, in the previous week the detection was 23,100.

In the past 24 hours till 8:00am yesterday, a total of 5,683 people tested positive after testing 24,548 samples.

The positivity rate was 23.15 percent.

The positivity rate is an important parameter to measure the level of virus transmission.

According to the World Health Organization, the transmission will be considered under control if the positivity rate remain stagnant below five percent continuously for at least two weeks.

After the second spike in November and December last year, the positivity rate started to going down from January. Throughout February, this rate was below three percent, but started rising in early March.

For nearly one month, the hospitals, especially in Dhaka city, have been struggling with the rising number of critical patients.

As of noon yesterday, only three ICU beds out of 118 in Dhaka’s Covid dedicated public hospitals were vacant.

Only 105 general beds in those hospitals out of 2,511 were vacant.

With the latest counts, the total number of deaths due to Coivid-19 rose to 9,213 while the number of confirmed cases to 6,30,277.

In the 24 hours, 2,364 patients recovered from their illnesses, raising the number to 5,49,775, which is more than 87 percent of all cases detected so far.

On March 8 last year, the DGHS reported the first three cases while the first death was reported on march 18.

Of the yesterday’s deceased, 38 were males and 20 were females.