Bangladesh has reported 46 more deaths due to the novel coronavirus, taking the total number of the COVID-19 fatalities in the country to 2,197, health officials said on Wednesday.

The total number of the COVID-19 cases in the country has surged to 172,134 with 3,489 people testing positive for the virus in the last 24 hours till 8 a.m. on Wednesday, an official from the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS)informed.

Another 2,736 infected patients have recovered at home and in hospital care in the same period, taking the total to 80,838, DGHS Additional Director General Nasima Sultana said during a media briefing here on the novel coronavirus situation.

The recovery rate from the disease currently stands at 46.96 per cent, while the mortality rate is 1.28 per cent, she added.

As many as 15,672 samples were tested at authorised labs across the country in the last 24 hours, 22.26 per cent of which returned positive results, bdnews24 reported.

Globally, over 11.83 million people have been infected by the novel coronavirus and 544,414 have died, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.  (IANS)