Flight to Italy: Bangladeshis didn’t carry fake Covid certificates

The Bangladeshis, who flew to Italy earlier this month, did not carry fake Covid-19 certificates, Bangladesh's foreign ministry said yesterday.

"Some of these passengers carried Covid-19 negative certificates on their own just in case they required those subsequently. The Italian government has not yet set any condition to carry Covid-19 negative certificates for travelling to that country," the ministry said in a statement.

"That means there were no connections between the Covid-19 certificates and the flight suspension," a foreign ministry official told The Daily Star.

The statement comes days after Italy suspended flights from Bangladesh and 12 other countries on July 7 after 36 passengers arriving in Rome from Bangladesh tested positive for coronavirus. Passengers were either dispatched to hospital, sent home to isolate or put up in an airport hotel for two weeks of quarantine.

However, some media reported that the suspension of flights was because some Bangladeshis carried fake Covid-19 certificates.

The ministry said some Bangladeshis who travelled to Italy in the recent days did not follow the mandatory quarantine rule, and probably a few of them might have spread the virus in the community.

"After travelling to Italy, some of the Bangladeshis had gone out of the hotel to have Bangladeshi food. That's how they could have spread the virus," the official added.

That was the actual reason why the Italian authorities suspended the flights initially for a week.

Later, the suspension has been extended until July 31, said the statement, refuting media reports that the suspension was until October 5.

The ministry said in the last one week, out of 5,000 tests, 65 Bangladeshi residents in the Lazio region of Italy have been detected with Covid-19.

The Italian authorities then decided to conduct coronavirus tests for all Bangladeshis (around 30,000) living the region, in coordination with the embassy of Bangladesh in Rome, the ministry mentioned.