Health Minister Zahid Maleque Saturday said the country would receive around 20 million (20 crore) vaccine doses from various sources in next one or two months.
These vaccines include one million AstraZeneca vaccines from Serum Institute of India, 5.0 million Sinovac doses from Sinopharm and 6.0 million doses of Pfizer vaccines from BioNTech of the US under the Covax facility.
These were revealed at a press briefing after the minister's visit to the Bangamata Sheikh Fazilatunnesa Mujib Field Hospital of BSMMU on Saturday.
Zahid Maleque said a lot of 6.0 million Pfizer vaccines would arrive by early August. The World Health Organization ( WHO) has informed regarding these vaccines. Besides, Bangladesh may receive another 5.0 million doses from China by the end of this month or early August.
"We expect we will have around 10 to 15 million doses of vaccines by next one and a half months. Besides, more vaccines are expected to come in August," the minister said.
Earlier on May 31, over 0.1 million doses of Pfizer vaccines arrived. The administering process of these vaccines has started already.
Mr Maleque said there will be a field hospital at the convention hall of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU) with 800 ICUs and HDUs.
The 1,000-bed field hospital will have 400-ICU and 400-HDU beds for the treatment of the Covid-19 patients.
"At least 90,000 Covid patients were detected in last 10 days with eight times increase in patient number. About 80 per cent hospital beds are filled up," the minister said.
" We hope we can make it a 1,200- bed hospital in this convention centre. There are 16,000 beds for Covid patients now with central oxygen facilities in 100 hospitals," said the minister.
The number of fatalities and new cases of Covid-19 declined slightly in the last 24-hour period until Saturday morning though the rate of infection was still maintaining a higher trend.
Some 185 more people fell prey to the deadly disease and 8,772 new cases were reported in the period.
With these, the total deaths reached 16,189 and total cases to 10,09,315 since the last year's March, according to the regular health bulletin of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
Since the virus broke out in the country, a total of 69,31,152 samples have been tested including 27,884 in the latest 24-hour period.
The positivity rate is still going up at an alarming level, revealed the DGHS data, reporting 31.46 per cent in the latest period and taking the figure for entire period to 14.56 per cent.
The country reported positivity rate at 30.95 and 31.62 per cent respectively on Thursday and Friday.
As per the DGHS data, the country witnessed upward trend in all aspects of the pandemic including number of deaths and detection on weekly tally.
At the end of 27th epidemiological week on 4th to 10th July, the country reported 48.66 per cent higher deaths from previous 26th epidemiological week (June 27-July 03).
A total of 1,277 people died in the latest weak which is significantly higher from the previous week's 859 deaths, the official data revealed. The weekly total positive cases also went up by 37.54 per cent from 53,118 in the last 26th week to 73,059 in the last week.
Of the latest victims, 70 died in Dhaka division, 51 in Khulna, 20 in Chattogram, 13 in Rajshahi, 11 in Rangpur, 10 in Barishal, Seven in Sylhet, and three in Mymensingh divisions.
The figure comprises 121 males and 64 females, mostly aged over 60 years, while the fatality rate is 1.60 per cent for the entire period, the official data revealed. Amid the rising number of deaths and positive cases, the recovery rate also went high to 38,940 in the last week which is 37.38 per cent more than 28,345 in the previous week.
Some 5,755 Covid patients recovered in the last 24-hour period.
Meanwhile, so far 83,93,378 people - 58,20,023 first dose and 42,94,555 second dose - have been vaccinated till Saturday noon.
