People aged 60 and older to get Covid booster dose

Health Minister Zahid Maleque on Tuesday said the government will administer Covid-19 vaccine booster dose for senior citizens aged 60 and above amid the emergence of Omicron – a new variant of Covid.

The government has taken a number of decisions including mandatory 14-day quarantine for the travellers of Omicron-affected countries to check the spread of the virus, he added.

The army will oversee this quarantine, but travellers will bear the cost, and if they are unable to do so, the government will take that matter into consideration. Zahid said this on Tuesday after an inter-ministerial meeting at the secretariat.

“India and some neighbouring countries are administering booster doses. We are also working on the issue and will make a decision soon. Travel to Bangladesh from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana, and Swaziland will be banned,” he noted.

The decisions also included ‘no vaccine, no service’ measure like the previous one -- ‘no mask, no services’.

Security will be tightened at the borders, and the government will send instructions to all district administrations to limit crowds at social and political gatherings, he pointed out, adding that concern about the new variant will not affect the current operation of schools and colleges.

The health minister said around 240 people, who returned from Africa last month, remain traceless and their cellphones are switched off. The government has been trying to locate them.

The new Covid-19 variant, Omicron, which was recently detected in South Africa, is more dangerous than the delta variant. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that Omicron poses a high risk of infection surges around the globe.

A number of countries have already taken steps to check the spread of the new variant which is called the most fatal one ever detected.