COVID infection rate high in Dhaka’s Rupnagar, Adabor

Dhaka has a high COVID-19 infection rate with the test positivity rate among suspected patients more than 30 percent in most areas of the city.

Senior Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 10 April 2021, 06:48 PM
Updated : 10 April 2021, 06:48 PM

The rate is as high as 46 percent in Rupnagar and 44 percent in Adabor.

The Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research or IEDCR published the findings on Saturday after analysing data collected in the week from Mar 27.

Although the infection rate is higher in Dhaka South, the number of patients in Dhaka North is much higher.

Samples from 14,332 people of Dhaka South were tested between Mar 27 and Apr 2. The results of 5,103, or 36 percent, came back positive.

In Dhaka North, the rate was 29 percent with 10,843 testing positive among 36,771 in this period.

The test positivity rate was 20.49 percent nationally in the daily count on Saturday, according to the Directorate General of Health Services or DGHS.

So far, the labs have detected the coronavirus infection in 13.65 percent of the samples.

The areas under 17 police stations in Dhaka have a positivity rate higher than 30 percent, according to the government’s disease control agency IEDCR.

Besides Rupnagar and Adabor, these areas are Shah Ali, Rampura, Turag, Mirpur, Kolabagan, Tejgaon, Mohammadpur, Mugda, Gendaria, Dhanmondi, Hazaribagh, New Market, Chawk Bazar, Sabujbagh, Motijheel, Darussalam and Khilgaon.

The rate is between 21 and 30 percent in 23 areas. They are Shahbagh, Bongshal, Lalbagh, Shahjahanpur, Ramna, Kamrangirchar, Shyampur, Badda, Banani, Uttarkhan, Sher-e-Bangla Nagar, Sutrapur, Jatrabari, Pallabi, Kafrul, Demra, Wari, Bhatara, Dakkhinkhan, Khilkhet, Kadamtali, East Uttara and Paltan.

Tejgaon Development, West Uttara, Bhashantek, Gulshan, Cantonment, Tejgaon Industrial Zone, and Airport areas have a positivity rate between 11 and 20 percent.

“We’ve been saying from the beginning that Dhaka has highest infection rate. Now the data has proved it,” said Dr Mushtuq Husain, who advises the government on COVID-19.

He said the dense population coupled with gatherings in indoor programmes drove the coronavirus cases in the city with high risks of person-to-person transmission.

The number of COVID-19 patients has been surging across Bangladesh since mid-March after relatively low infection for months.

Amid the second wave of the outbreak, the government confirmed record 7,626

confirmed cases in the daily count on Apr 7. The highest daily count of 77 deaths from the disease was recorded on Saturday.

With the death count rising to 9,661, the caseload has swelled to 678,937 until Saturday.