900 thousand Rohingya Muslims are in danger when Covid-19 has reached the world's largest refugee camp

Mia

Tuesday, May 19, 2020 | 11:22 pm

(As many as 900 thousand Rohingya Muslims are in danger when Covid-19 has reached the largest refugee camp in the world)

News24xx.com -

The first COVID-19 case was found in one of the largest refugee camps in Bangladesh, which currently houses around nine lakh Rohingya refugees, who live in overcrowded and unhygienic conditions.

Reported first by Deputy, This case was seen in camps at Cox's Bazaar in Bangladesh on Thursday. The entire refugee area consists of 34 camps that house more than 855,000 Rohingya Muslims, who fled Myanmar in 2017 after facing severe genocide violence. The density of people living in the camp is around 103,000 people per square mile. That's a lot of people, in a very small space.

The authorities have been locking it for several weeks now. Even aid groups that help people in these refugee camps have stopped their operations to prevent infection after one of the first cases of COVID-19 appeared in the town near Cox's Bazaar.

Speaking about the COVID-19 case in the refugee camp, the United Nations refugee agency has confirmed and stated that infected Rohingya refugees have been isolated, while the authorities are tracking contacts to understand who might be infected, however, officials are worried that it is too late and the disease may have spread wider than imagined.

What's worse is that very little can be done to maintain cleanliness because they live in a crowded one-room hut, where bathroom and toilet facilities are already crowded. There is no access to clean water and soap.

In addition, testing in the camp was not as fast as needed with only 93 tests carried out since Tuesday, last week, according to the World Health Organization. In addition, the situation will only worsen with the start of the Monsoon season which will make sanitation conditions that are already poorly inhabited.

Bangladesh has been locked since 26 March, and has reported more than 18,000 new cases of corona virus with more than 280 deaths.