The government on Sunday confirmed the detection of 418 new cases of coronavirus in Bangladesh, raising the total number of COVID-19 patients to 5416.
Five more patients including a child died in the last 24 hours, taking the total toll to 145.
Additional Director General for Health Prof Dr Nasima Sultana at the daily health bulletin at 2.30pm said they had tested 3,473 samples during the period between 8am of Saturday and 8am of Sunday.
Bangladesh confirmed the first three cases of coronavirus on March 8 and the first death on March 18. Till March 23, the number of cases was only six.
As of Sunday, 122 recovered from hospitals.
Prof Nasima said most of the patients are staying at home.
The World Health Organisation declared the virus pandemic on March 11.
The government is enforcing nationwide lockdown till May 5. People have been asked to stay at home and wash hands with soap and not to touch mouth, nose and eyes with unclean hands.
Maintaining physical distancing of at least 1 meter is also strongly recommended by the WHO.
The government is testing samples in 25 PCR labs across Bangladesh. So far, 46,589 samples have been tested.
The additional director general said they have adequate testing kits to test the presumptive cases.
About the deceased, she said one was aged below 10 years who was suffering from kidney diseases. Three of the dead were male and two were female. Four were from Dhaka and the other from Dohar.
Apart from the child, one of the patients was aged above 60 and other three between 51 years and 60 years of age.
A large number of infected people are health workers who contracted the virus while performing their duties, Prof Nasima said without giving a figure.
“Doctors, nurses, lab technicians, ward boys, drivers and many other who are doing their duties are falling victim to the disease. Many members of the law enforcement agencies are also being infected. Let's pray for their quick recovery in the holy month of Ramadan,” she said.
Different doctors associations put the figure around 500.
Currently, 1164 people are in isolation with 2891 more people have been home and institutionally quarantined in the last 24 hours.
“A total of 601 institutions are ready across the country to accommodate over 30,000 people for institutional quarantine,” Prof Nasima said.
