Bangladesh has remained the worst performer in the region in tackling Covid-19 pandemic even after 139 days since the first case was reported.
Higher rates of infections with lower recovery put the country in a box in South Asia. Bangladesh is now hosting the second-highest number of patients getting home or hospital care in Asia, only after India.
In terms of recovery, the rate of recovery in the small country of 170 million was 55.33 per cent, which is the lowest in South Asia, according to worldometer data.
The recovery rate was the highest in Pakistan (81.28 per cent), followed by Bhutan (90.21 per cent), the Maldives (77.82 per cent), Sri Lanka (76.06 per cent), Nepal (68.41 per cent), Afghanistan (68.37 per cent) and India (63.37 per cent).
In case of infection rates, only Afghanistan trails Bangladesh is just in the eight-nation regional bloc, with 20 in each 100 samples getting tested positive.
Infection rates in other countries in the bloc are 0.22 per cent in Bhutan, 1.91 per cent in Sri Lanka, 2.84 per cent in Nepal, 4.45 per cent in the Maldives, 8.36 per cent in India, 14.84 per cent in Pakistan and 41.85 per cent in Afghanistan.
With 1,768 more patients tested negative in the last 24 hours, the tally of recovery reached 120,976, according to the state-run Directorate General of Health Services or DGHS.
At Friday's online news conference, DGHS additional director general Prof Dr Nasima Sultana said a total of 12,027 samples have been tested across the country since Thursday.
With the tests, a total of 1,091,034 samples have so far been tested in the country.
Of the tests, 2,548 samples were found Covid-19 positive along with 35 more deaths recorded during the same period, she said. With these numbers, the overall tally of confirmed cases and deaths rose to 218,658 and 2,836 respectively, she said.
Eleven of the latest deaths were recorded in Dhaka division, followed by six in Khulna, six in Chattogram, four in Sylhet, four in Rangpur, three in Barshal and one in Rajshahi divisions, said Dr Sultana who is responsible for administrative affairs.
Globally, over 15.6 million people were infected with the lethal pathogen and 637,354 succumbed until Friday 6:45 pm, according to Worldometer data.
