Despite low testing rates of 154 per million, it took just 40 days



Bangladesh on Saturday not only reached its highest single-day infections of Covid-19, but also went past the grim 2,000 landmark despite that fact that the South Asian country has a low testing rate.

A worrisome indicator of things to come, this feat was achieved in just four days. On April 14, infections were at 1,000, with a steep jump to 2000 on Saturday.

When compared to the worst affected six countries having over 100,000 confirmed cases each, Bangladesh is ahead of many of them in terms of reaching the 2,000 limit.

According to Worldometer, Italy took just 32 days—the least time period-- to surpass 2,000 deaths since the first case was reported in the country, while Spain 41 days, Germany 46 days, and France and the UK 48 days each.

Interestingly, both Italy and France reported their first cases of Covid-19 on March 31, but the latter took nine days more to exceed 2,000 cases.

The US took a little longer to register 2,000 deaths as those took place on the 53rd day since the country first confirmed a Covid-19 case on January 21.

Bangladesh reported its first three Covid-19 infections on March 8 and first death from the virus 10 days later.

The 2,000 landmark came just before the country’s health authorities confirmed seven more deaths from Covid-19 infection in the last 24 hours on Sunday, taking the death toll to 91.

As of Sunday afternoon, the country’s testing rate stands at 145 for per 1 million people.

On Sunday, 312 more people tested positive for Covid-19, a disease caused by Sars-Cov2, over the same period, causing a total infection of 2,456.

Poor testing rate still a major concern

Despite increasing the testing of suspected Covid-19 patients, Bangladesh still holds a poor position in this regard, ranking the 14th lowest across the world.

Its performance among Asian nation is even more disappointing as it ranks in the second last position on the list.

As of 5pm on Sunday, the country is testing 145 samples for every 1 million people, just ahead of Myanmar which has a testing rate of 76 in a million.

Amid much criticism from different quarters throughout last month, Bangladesh government finally expanded its numbers for testing from early April.

But the increase seems to be inadequate when compared to the global standard of Covid-19 sample testing.

Though the health minister directly did not admit the fact, he in an online briefing on Sunday said that more tests needed to be conducted to detect more cases.

“We have to do more tests as we are yet to reach the peak,” he said, adding that increased tests will help detect more patients and treat them accordingly.

Bangladesh in a 24-hour span until 8am on Sunday tested 2,634 samples in 18 labs across the country to confirm 312 new cases.

Overall there are now 2,456 infected persons found from testing 23,941 samples.

Just one notch ahead of Bangladesh in terms of having total cases in Asian, Thailand is currently testing at a rate of 1,440 per million people. This shockingly implies that Thailand’s testing rate is almost 10 times higher than that of Bangladesh.