First Rohingya refugee dies from Covid-19

DHAKA: A 71-year-old man has become the first Rohingya living in vast refugee camps in Bangladesh to die from the coronavirus, an official said.

Health experts have long warned that the deadly virus could race through the vast cramped network of bamboo shacks housing almost a million refugees who have fled neighbouring Myanmar since a military crackdown in 2017.

Toha Bhuiyan, a senior health official in the Cox’s Bazar district, said the man died on Sunday and confirmation of coronavirus as the cause came on Monday night.

Mohammad Shafi, a Rohingya school teacher and a neighbour in the camps, said the man had long suffered from high blood pressure and a kidney complaint.

“Nobody realised that he was suffering from coronavirus. The news came as a shock to us,”

Shafi told AFP.

“In recent weeks a lot of people in the camps are suffering from fever, headache and body pain. But most think they got sick because of the change of weather. They don’t bother to get tested for coronavirus.”

The fatality was in the Kutupalong shelter in southeast Bangladesh – the biggest refugee camp in the world – which alone is home to roughly 600,000 people.

The man was among at least 29 Rohingya to have tested positive for the virus in the camps.

Bhuiyan said the victim died in an isolation centre run by the medical charity Doctors Without Borders and was buried in the camp the same day.

He said authorities were trying to find people the deceased had been in contact with.

Nine people have so far been placed in isolation. — AFP