10 Omicron cases reported as daily infections cross 1,000 again after 99 days
Seven more deaths reported in last 24 hours
Bangladesh reported 10 new cases of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus on Thursday.
With this, the total number of confirmed Omicron cases rose to 20; all of those were from Dhaka city.
The information on the new Omicron cases were published on the Germany-based global database GISAID on Thursday evening.
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Meanwhile, the number of daily Covid-19 cases in Bangladesh rose to 1,140 on Thursday, which is the highest in the past 99 days, taking the positivity rate to 4.86%. Seven more deaths from the virus were also reported in the same period.
On 29 September last year, Bangladesh reported 1,178 cases and since then the daily cases continued to go down and remained below 800 for the past few months.
Professor Nazrul Islam, noted virologist and a member of the National Technical Advisory Committee on Covid-19, told The Business Standard that it is a matter of concern that the positivity rate has gone from 1% to almost 5% in just two weeks.
"Masks can resist all kinds of variants so everyone should wear a mask. Besides, everyone has to be vaccinated. Hospitals need to be prepared with adequate oxygen and other arrangements required for the treatment of Covid-19 patients," he added.
With the latest additions, the death toll reached 28,097 and the case tally climbed to 15,89,947 in the country.
Also, 196 patients were declared Covid-19 free during the 24 hours, taking the recovery rate to 97.51%.
Omicron
The samples were collected from the patients between 14 December and 3 January – including five in the past seven days till 30 December.
There was no data on the travel history of these new Omicron cases available on the website.
The Institute for Developing Science and Health Initiatives (iDesHi), the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research,
Bangladesh (icddr,b) and the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) submitted those genome sequence data.
The country's maiden cases were reported on 8 March 2020 and the first death from the virus was reported on 18 March the same year.
