The authorities in Bangladesh on Friday put five Rohingya camps under lockdown until further notice after a dramatic rise in Covid-19 cases among the refugees.
Additional Refugee, Relief and Repatriation Commissioner Shamsud Douza confirmed the matter to The Business Post, adding that inter-camp movement in five out of 34 Rohingyas refugee camps was banned as part of the new restrictions.
“We had some restrictions already in the camps. New restrictions were imposed in camps 2, 3, 4, 15 and 24,” he said.
Until now the authorities allowed people in the camps for providing food, medical, hygiene and some emergency services.
Douza said under the new restrictions, only food and medical services would be allowed in the camps and that with a minimum required people.
“For other services, we have to be consulted,” he said.
An official of the Cox’s Bazar Civil Surgeon office said the district recorded 9,461 Covid-19 cases and 105 deaths since March 2020.
They included 913 cases and 12 deaths among Rohingyas.
Among the Rohingyas infected by the virus, authorities recorded 119 cases in the past three days, including the highest 45 cases on Thursday, said the official.
Experts blamed the return of NGO workers after the Eid-ul-Fitr break for the dramatic rise in Covid-19 cases in the camps.
“Many NGO workers visited Covid-19 hotspots like Dhaka during the Eid holiday. They came back on duty without going through a quarantine period,” said Anupam Barua, principal of Cox’s Bazar Medical College Hospital.
Nearly 7, 40,000 Rohingya refugees fled to Bangladesh following a wave of persecution and military crackdown in Myanmar in August 2017. The number of Rohingyas living in Cox’s Bazar is over one million, according to Bangladeshi authorities.
