Bangladesh saw another spike in the number of coronavirus cases and deaths on Wednesday when the health authorities announced detection of 2695 new cases until morning.

“During this period, 37 patients have died, raising the death toll to 746 ,” said Prof Dr Nasima Sultana, Additional Director General of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) at a regular online briefing, reports UNB.

Bangladesh confirmed its first cases on March 8 and the first death on March 18 but it has been seeing a sharp rise in both new cases and deaths in recent weeks.

In the last month alone, the country recorded 452 deaths and 39,386 confirmed cases.

In March, the number of confirmed cases was 51 and six people were killed. In April, 160 people were killed while 7,616 confirmed cases were reported.

Global situation

The number of globally confirmed coronavirus cases has gone up to 6,377,596 while the death toll reached 380,205 on Wednesday morning, according to the Centre for System Science and Engineering of the Johns Hopkins University.

JHU data show that Brazil has 555,383 confirmed coronavirus cases, the second highest in the world after the USA. The South American country lost 31,199 lives to Covid-19 till date.

The US has the highest number of confirmed cases and deaths. It recorded 106,180 deaths and 1,831,806 cases so far. In the US, New York State alone counted 29,968 deaths till date.

The UK has the second-highest death toll at 39,452, followed by Italy with 33,530, France 28,943 and Spain 27,127, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Coronavirus cases were first reported in China in December last year.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the coronavirus crisis a pandemic on March 11.