Race to prevent coronavirus ‘nightmare’ in Rohingya camps

Emergency teams raced Friday to prevent a coronavirus “nightmare” in the world’s largest refugee settlement after the first confirmed cases in a sprawling city of shacks housing nearly a million Rohingya.  Â

There have long been warnings the virus could race like wildfire through the cramped, sometimes sewage-soaked alleys of the network of 34 camps in southeast Bangladesh.  Â

Most of the refugees have been there since around 750,000 of the Muslim minority fled a 2017 military offensive in neighbouring Myanmar for which its government faces genocide charges at the UN’s top court.  Â

Local health co-ordinator Abu Toha Bhuiyan initially said on Thursday two refugees had tested positive.  Â

But the World Health Organisation (WHO) later said one case was a Rohingya man, and the other was a local man who lived nearby.  Â

Mahbubur Rahman, the chief health official in the local Cox’s Bazar district, said news of the infections had sparked “panic” in the camps.  Â

The 35-year-old Rohingya man, who lives in Kutupalong — the largest of the camps — also sparked a manhunt at one point after he fled before police found him around four hours later.  Â

 “We are worried. He can spread the disease in the camps,” community leader Abdur Rahim told AFP.  Â
Rahim said the man is believed to have been infected in a hospital in a nearby town where he took his injured brother for treatment.  Â

WHO spokesman Catalin Bercaru told AFP that “rapid investigation teams” were being deployed.  Â