Bangladesh ready to fight COVID-19 with UK: PM

Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Saturday expressed sadness to her British counterpart Boris Johnson who has contracted novel coronavirus and said that her government is ready to work closely with the United Kingdom (UK) government to overcome the challenge arisen due to the outbreak of the lethal virus across the globe.

“Our government will always be prepared to work with UK government in the spirit of existing cooperation in mutual efforts to overcome this challenge, and with determination to succeed,” state-run Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha news agency quotes Hasina as saying in her letter to the UK prime minister.

PM’s Assistant Press Secretary A.B.M. Sarwer-E-Alom Sarker said, in the letter, the Bangladesh prime minister wished full recovery of Boris Johnson from the Covid-19 at the soonest.

“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 death 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.

“We started screening the suspects at the airport along with the arrangement of dedicated quarantine zones for the people arriving from the affected countries since January,” she said.

The premier said a high-powered national committee including the task forces of different compositions was 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 the people to stay home,” she said.

Sheikh Hasina said the government suspended all public gatherings relating to the celebration of the long-cherished birth centenary of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and cancelled all the state and private get-togethers.

“We closed down all government and private offices and activities except the emergency services to curb the spread of the virus for 10 days since the 25th of this month. 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 has so far, the confirmed 48 cases with 5 unfortunate deaths, along with a minute success of 15 complete recoveries.

Kamruzzaman