Bangladesh's daily virus death toll lowest in 5 months

DHAKA, Bangladesh

Bangladesh on Sunday registered 14 new coronavirus-linked deaths, the lowest daily toll since May 12, officials said Sunday.

The number of fatalities from the novel virus, which originated in China last December, now stands at 5,660.

The total number of people having tested positive rose by 1,274 to 388,569, according to the Health Ministry.

As many as 1,674 more patients regained health, taking the total of recoveries to 303,972.

The South Asian country of 165 million people has so far tested 2.1 million people, with 11,866 samples tested in the last 24 hours.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has asked the citizens to strictly follow the preventive measures.

Bangladesh has been witnessing a steady fall in average virus-linked deaths, test positivity and case rates since the past few weeks. This is partly because of a fall in testing numbers. It was testing over 18,000 a day in June. Since then, daily testing varies between ten and fifteen thousand.