<div style="text-align: justify; ">Another 49 people were hospitalised with dengue in 24 hours till Friday morning.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">The total fatalities remained unchanged at 269 as no death was reported during this period, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Of the new patients, 28 were admitted to the hospitals of Dhaka and 21 outside it, said DGHS.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">A total of 774 dengue patients, including 451 in the capital, are now receiving treatment at hospitals across the country.</div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">The DGHS has recorded 61,138 dengue cases and 60,095 recoveries so far this year.</div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">The 269 fatalities is by far the highest ever recorded in a single year in Bangladesh, far outstripping the previous record of 179 deaths against 101,354 cases recorded in 2019.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That means a 50% jump in the number of deaths, despite a 40% decline in cases from 2019. The significantly increased case fatality rate could be down to the discovery of a new strain of the virus previously never spotted in Bangladesh, that DGHS scientists reported back in August.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Generally it is seen that severe dengue disease is most common in those who suffer a second infection, usually by a different strain to the first. The chances of that naturally increase with the introduction of a new strain in the environment. There are four known strains of the dengue virus. UNB</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd24/kh</div>