Home ›› 17 Aug 2021 ›› Governance
Lambda variant of Covid-19, which was first tracked in South American country Peru in 2020, has been detected in Bangladesh.
The scientists of the Bangladesh Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and Jahangirnagar University jointly conducted the genome sequencing of the sample of Lambda variant infection and found its presence.
The variant is now detected in over 30 countries.
Meanwhile, Covid-related deaths decreased by 12.27 per cent and infection by 27.03 per cent within a week as the health department also reduced testing samples by 10.97 per cent.
The Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) in a regular press release on Monday also said that the first week of this month they had recorded 1,736 deaths, the highest ever Covid-19 deaths in the country, and 89,367 infections which dwindled to 1,523 and 65,207 respectively as the virus situation improved in the country.
Bangladesh detected the highest 99,693 Covid-19 positive cases between July 26 and August 1.
The DGHS detected 6,959 Covid-19 positive cases and recorded 174 deaths in a span of 24 hours till 8:00am on Monday.
After testing 33,015 samples in 717 laboratories across the country the DGHS found 21.08 positivity rates.
Among the dead, 90 were male as a total of 16,033 men died of Covid till the day which was 65.85 per cent of the total deaths.
Till today, 14,25,861 Covid-19 positive cases and 24,349 deaths were recorded since the country first found the case on March 8, 2020.
Meanwhile, the international open source database, GISAID, which is tracking variants of the novel coronavirus, has confirmed the detection of Lambda — a variant of Covid in Bangladesh.
Former Vice Chancellor Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University Md Kamrul Hasan Khan told The Business Post that the variant was not as infectious as Delta.
