Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has expressed her sadness about her British counterpart Boris Johnson testing positive for coronavirus. She has said that her government is ready to work closely with the United Kingdom government in overcoming the challenge arising out of the outbreak of the lethal virus across the globe, according to a press statement from the PMO.
“Our government will always be prepared to work with the UK government in the spirit of existing cooperation in mutual efforts to overcome this challenge, and with a determination to succeed,” she said in a letter to the British prime minister yesterday.
PM’s Assistant Press Secretary A.B.M. Sarwer-E-Alom Sarker said in the letter the Bangladesh prime minister had wished Boris Johnson full recovery from the Covid-19 at the earliest.
“While we’re all fighting our own battles and challenges against the spread and loss of lives from the pandemic coronavirus, I have been closely following all your timely and dynamic leadership initiatives, including extreme lockdown, supporting laws and financial stimulus to protect the people of the United Kingdom from the devastation and deaths resulting from the coronavirus,” she said in the letter.
Elaborating her government’s measures to fend off the fatal virus, Sheikh Hasina said: “Understanding the grave concern over the global outbreak, the government acted very seriously from the very outset of this crisis.”
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson | Reuters
“We started screening the suspects at the airport along with the arrangement of dedicated quarantine zones for people arriving from the affected countries since January,” she said.
The premier said a high-powered national committee had been formed to tackle the different dimensions of the spread of Covid-19 and its challenges.
“We prepared designated hospitals, and equipped our health professionals with necessary facilities. We shut down all educational institutions in the country and locked down infection-prone areas to prevent community transmission and advised people to stay at home,” she said.
Sheikh Hasina said the government had suspended all public gatherings relating to the celebrations of the birth centenary of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and cancelled all the state and private formalities in this regard.
“We closed down for 10 days since the 25th of this month all government and private offices and activities, except emergency services, to curb the spread of the virus. We are unceasingly conducting mass awareness both from the party and the government to protect our people from this lethal virus,” she said.
The prime minister said due to all these preemptive measures, the government had so far seen confirmed cases relating to 48 people, with 5 unfortunate deaths, along with 11 complete recoveries.
