The government is mulling over announcing general holiday at the red zone areas to control further spread of deadly coronavirus in Bangladesh.
All offices, business, and other institutions will remain open in the green and yellow zones on a limited scale following the zoning plan.
A virtual meeting on challenges and progress of the zoning system, chaired by the Health Minister Zahid Maleque, was held on Friday.
The meeting recommended declaring general holiday at the red zones as it is mandatory for everyone under the zones to stay at home.
“Despite coronavirus infection spiking in Bangladesh, we will not go back to the general holiday enforcement model. We are planning to announce lockdown only at the hotspots (red zone) to control further spread of the virus,” said Farhad Hossain, state minister of the Ministry of Public Administration, who also participated in the meeting.
“Operations will remain active in the other areas, as countrywide lockdown is not effective,” he told the Dhaka Tribune on Friday.
Earlier, Bangladesh executed a nationwide general holiday from March 26 to May 30 to curb the pandemic and allowed all offices and businesses to open on a limited scale since May 31.
Such directives will remain in force until June 15, according to a gazette issued by the cabinet division.
On May 26, Farhad Hossain, state minister of the Ministry of Public Administration had said: “Actually, we do not know how many more days we will need to keep out of the fight against the Covid-19 virus as no medicine or vaccine against the virus has been confirmed yet. Therefore, we are going to open all government, semi-government and private offices. We will also monitor the overall situation to take further decisions.”
Unfortunately, coronavirus infection is spiking in Bangladesh since the lockdown has been lifted since May 31.
Bangladesh has recorded 500 deaths between May 31 to June 12, a time when the offices and transports have been operational, whereas the first 500 deaths were counted in 73 days since March 18.
“We are now specifying the most infected areas as red zones, in terms of positive cases in comparison to the whole population, for imposing a strict lockdown,” said Farhad Hossain.
Challenges of zone-wise lockdown:
The DGHS zone-wise lockdown guidelines also suggested that containing the transmission of Covid-19, a risk-area-based cluster or localized lockdown with very specific activities needs to be undertaken.
This approach will avoid the need for a full national lockdown.
The guideline has suggested ensuring all kinds of medical services at the risky lockdown areas.
However, ensuring medical facilities at the specific hotspots remain challenging for the government.
Meeting sources said it is necessary to install booths for collecting samples at the risky zones. However, booths aren’t present in all areas of Dhaka. Also, the government is yet to install any booth outside Dhaka.
“Setting up an isolation centre is also challenging as hospitals are not available at all para mohollas [locality]. Even they do not have multi-storied schools or community centres for establishing isolation centres,” sources said.
According to the guideline, residents will get 24/7 ambulance service at the lockdown areas.
Meeting sources said: “Even ensuring 24/7 ambulance service for all lockdown areas is not always possible.”
Syeda Farhana Kawnine, the deputy commissioner of Narsingdi district and core member of executing the zoning system, said: “Most of the challenges [of executing lockdown] discussed in the meeting can be overcome.
“For example, we have an ambulance at the department of the government, which is hardly used now. The local committee can hire ambulances from other departments or agencies as well,” she added.