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Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has ordered government officials to stay fully alert to the threat of coronavirus in a bid to prevent it from spreading to Bangladesh.
She gave the directive at a cabinet meeting at the Secretariat on Monday, said Cabinet Secretary Khandker Anwarul Islam, reports bdnews24.com.
“The Prime Minister said we must be more alert and attentive to the threat. We must thoroughly screen passengers coming into the country from China,” he said.
“Everyone must be careful. We need to set up special quarantine measures at airports and ports so that it doesn’t spread in Bangladesh.”
The authorities have been instructed to keep an eye on passengers arriving in the country from China or Hong Kong, according to Anwarul.
Ports receiving goods directly from China will also be under the scanner.
The total number of confirmed cases in China rose about 30 per cent to 2,744, about half of them in Hubei province, whose capital is Wuhan – the epicentre of the outbreak.
As worries grew around the world, Chinese-ruled Hong Kong, which has had eight confirmed cases, banned entry to people who had visited Hubei in the past 14 days. The ban did not cover Hong Kong residents.
The number of deaths from the flu-like virus in Hubei climbed to 76 from 56, health officials said, with five deaths elsewhere in China, including the southern island province of Hainan, which reported its first fatality on Monday.
While a small number of cases have been confirmed in more than 10 countries, linked to people who travelled from Wuhan, no deaths have been reported elsewhere.