Italy has deployed soldiers to a town in the southern region of Calabria, where residents have been protesting over Covid-19 positive Bangladeshi migrants quarantined in a residential block, The Guardian reported.
The soldiers will stand guard outside the apartment block in Amantea, where 13 Bangladeshis are in isolation after testing positive for Covid-19.
Residents of Amantea took to the streets and blocked a road to protest the decision to house the Bangladeshis near other residential buildings.
Soldiers will now patrol the apartment block housing the Bangladeshis to ensure no one breaks quarantine.
The prefecture of Cosenza commented: “The soldiers will not allow the migrants to leave the welcome centres. Only medical personnel will be allowed to enter.”
However, authorities did not specify whether another reason for the military presence was to protect Bangladeshis from the protests.
“I share their concern,” the governor of the Calabria region, Jole Santelli, said of the protesters in an interview with Sky TG24 TV.
Recently Rome’s daily newspaper Il Messaggero reported that as many as 600 Bangladeshis infected with Covid-19, but undetected, have been moving around in Rome and Italy.
''Our experts made calculations, based on the data obtained from the sample of passengers on the special flight arriving from Dhaka on Monday [July 6], in which 13% of the passengers tested positive," Alessio D'Amato, health councillor of Lazio, told the newspaper.
On July 7, Italy's health minister ordered a one-week suspension of flights to Rome from Bangladesh, after 21 passengers arriving from Dhaka tested positive, adding to the number of cases within the Bangladeshi community in the Lazio region surrounding Rome.
D'Amato called it a "veritable viral 'bomb' that we've defused."