The Corona pandemic in Bangladesh continued to sperad as the number of infected people crossed 98,000 on Wednesday in the country. According to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), 4008 new Corona positive cases were detected in the country on Wednesday which is the highest single day figure since the first Corona infection was found in Bangladesh on March 8. The number of people succumbing to Coronavirus increased to 1305 as 43 people died in the 24 hours since Tuesday afternoon.

The country also continued to have high profile people getting infected by the Coronavirus. On Wednesday, Commerce Minister Tipu Munshi was found to be Corona positive. Archbishop Moses Costa of Chittagong has been admitted to a hospital in Dhaka on June 13 after he was found Corona positive. Earlier, the State Minister for Religious Affairs Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah who passed away 0n 13th June. He was also found to be Corona positive.

More than 6200 police personnel were reported to be Corona positive till last week. According to the Bangladesh Doctor’s Foundation (BDF), at least 31 doctors have died of Coronavirus infection in the country.

In the meanwhile, the local testing kit based on Rapid dot blot technology developed by the health sector NGO Gonoshasthaya Kendra was found not suitable for use after the evaluation done by the research team appointed by the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU).The Gonoshasthaya Kendra had claimed that the kit would be cheap costing less than Taka 300 for each Corona test.

Going ahead with various options for treatment of the Corona positive cases, the International Health Research institute ICDDR’B started the clinical trial for the Ivermectin medicine in Bangladesh. According to the Press statement released by the ICDDR’B on Wednesday, it started the clinical trial of Ivermectin in combination with antibiotic doxycycline or Ivermectin alone as a possible line of treatment for COVID 19 patients.

Meanwhile, briefing the media yesterday, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted that China reported a new cluster of COVID-19 cases in Beijing, after more than 50 days without a case in the city. More than 100 cases have now been confirmed in Beijing and the origin and extent of the outbreak are being investigated.

The head of the World Health Organization, WHO, has said that more than one lakh confirmed cases of Coronavirus have been reported worldwide each day over the past two weeks while it took more than two months for the first one lakh cases to be reported. He said that almost 75 per cent of recent cases have been reported from 10 countries, mostly in America and South Asia. WHO added that there have been increases in the numbers of cases in Africa, Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East as well.