News Desk: Bangladesh recorded 1,676 new Covid-19 cases and 38 more deaths in the 24 hours between 8am Saturday and 8am Sunday.

Also, 1,897 people recovered from the disease through treatment at either home or hospital during the same period, according to the latest data released by the health directorate on Sunday afternoon.

The latest figures took the total number of cases to 810,990, the death toll to 12,839, and the tally of recoveries to 751,322 around the country.

Between Saturday and Sunday mornings, as many as 15,613 samples were tested at 509 authorized labs across the country, yielding a positivity rate of 10.73%.

Meanwhile, the overall Covid-19 infection rate stood at 13.41%, based on results of 6,049,873 tests conducted nationwide so far.

The health directorate statistics showed that 92.64% of the people infected since March last year have recovered and 1.58% died.

Of the fresh 38 deceased — 25 men and 13 women, 12 died in Chittagong Division, four each in Dhaka and Rajshahi, six in Khulna, three each in Sylhet and Mymensingh, five in Rangpur, and one in Barisal Division.

Thirty-one of them died at state-run hospitals, six at private hospitals and one at home.

So far, a total of 9,256 men and 3,583 women have died in Bangladesh from Covid-19, a severe acute respiratory illness caused by a new coronavirus strain later named Sars-CoV-2.

According to the health directorate, among the total 12,839 fatalities so far, 7,229 deaths occurred in Dhaka Division, 2,457 in Chittagong, 725 in Rajshahi, 816 in Khulna, 389 in Barisal, 473 in Sylhet, 487 in Rangpur, and 263 in Mymensingh Division.

Vaccination-

Meanwhile, 7,248,829 people had registered for the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, purchased from the Serum Institute of Indian (SII), across Bangladesh until May 6.

Afterwards, the registration process and administration of the first shot were suspended as the authorities faced a vaccine shortage when SII stopped exporting vaccine in light of the record-breaking surge in cases and deaths in India.

Since January 27, some 5,820,015 people around Bangladesh have taken the first dose of the vaccine and 4,209,333 people received the second shot.

Bangladesh is currently working on procuring Covid-19 vaccines from other sources, including China, Russia and the US.

Global situation-

Covid-19 had broken out in China’s Wuhan city in late December of 2019 and quickly spread throughout the world, becoming a global pandemic in less than three months.

The world’s first death from the deadly disease was also recorded in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, on January 11, 2020.

Since then, until Sunday evening, the fast-spreading virus claimed more than 3,737,500 lives and infected over 173,768,100 people across the world, according to worldometer.

At the same time, over 156,647,200 people have also recovered from Covid-19.