341 stranded in Wuhan to return home tonight

Some 341 Bangladeshis stranded in the Coronavirus-hit Chinese city of Wuhan would be brought back home in a special flight tonight.

They would be kept at a makeshift hospital in Ashkona hajj camp in the capital for 14 days for observation, the health ministry’s public relations officer said last night.

The decision was made in a Directorate General of Health Services meeting after the foreign ministry got the nod from the Chinese authorities. 

“We were notified of the decision in the evening. Then we held a meeting at the DGHS. We are now preparing the Ashkona hajj camp to quarantine all returnees,” Prof Meerjady Sabrina Flora, director of the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research told The Daily Star last night.

“Ashkona is our primary option. If we need, we will also prepare Kuwait-Bangladesh Friendship Hospital.

“The foreign ministry is coordinating everything. We are now taking preparation to receive them safely,” said Prof Flora.

An inter- ministerial meeting is scheduled to be held this morning at the airport. 

Health Minister Zahid Maleque will brief the media after the meeting.

Earlier in the day, Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen said the Chinese government would bear the medical cost of Bangladeshis if they get infected with the coronavirus in China.  

Until yesterday, 370 Bangladeshis in Wuhan city have agreed to return to Bangladesh, he told reporters after attending the closing ceremony of the Bangladesh Development Forum at the city’s Bangabandhu International Conference Centre. 

However, 15 other Bangladeshis said it won’t be good for the country if they were infected by the virus and returned home. 

“There might be some more who would like to come home. We will repatriate them as soon as the Chinese authorities allow. They are now in quarantine,” Momen said. 

China has informed Bangladesh that it won’t allow the Bangladeshis to leave before February 6, when two weeks of quarantine expires.  

He said Bangladesh has commercial planes with 419 seats, and those can be sent to China to bring back the Bangladeshis. 

Asked if there were any plans for imposing a travel ban, he said there was no such plan.  

So far, no Bangladeshi has been infected with the coronavirus.  

If anybody is found having symptoms, they would be kept under special observation at hospitals, and the health ministry has already made the arrangements, he said.