Bangladesh is set to send a plane to the Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicentre of a deadly coronavirus outbreak, to evacuate its nationals.
The Biman Bangladesh Airlines flight will depart Dhaka on Friday (today) afternoon, bdnews24.com reported quoting Meerjady Sabrina Flora, a director at the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research or IEDCR, late on Thursday night.
On return from Wuhan around midnight, the Bangladeshi nationals will be kept isolated and under observation at the Ashkona Hajj Camp near Shahjalal International Airport, she said.
The flight would ferry back a total of 341 Bangladeshis from the Chinese city, according to Flora.
The IEDCR is consulting Mushtuq Husain, who has recently retired as its chief scientific officer, for the preparations to bring the Bangladeshis back from Wuhan.
He has been told to go to the airport at 9:00am on Friday to take part in a simulation exercise, he told the news agency.
“We will go to the Hajj Camp from there. I’ve been asked to see where and how they will be kept upon return,” he said.
The government had earlier said the Bangladesh embassy in China was “in touch” with about 400 Bangladeshi students, who have been locked down along with millions in Wuhan.
The embassy also established contact with the Chinese authorities to ensure urgent support for the expatriates in Wuhan, the foreign ministry had said in a statement after the outbreak started.
The embassy has opened a hotline number: +86 178-0111-6005 for the Bangladeshis in Wuhan.
Some of the Bangladeshi students in Wuhan told the news agency on Thursday that they wanted to return home as soon as possible from the city of eerie silence.
They said they were ready to undergo all the necessary tests and be quarantined to ensure that the virus does not spread in Bangladesh.
Reza Sultanuzzaman, a Bangladeshi researcher in China, said the embassy collected information on 371 nationals, mostly students of 22 universities in Wuhan.
Out of them, 321 elderly and 19 children were eager to return home while the rest did not show interest in getting back to Bangladesh, he said.
Rakibil Turja, a Bangladeshi student at Hubei University of Technology, said they were locked down in the dormitory.
“We are getting food from the canteen, but it’s difficult to stay in the room for long,” he said, adding that most of the Bangladeshi students wanted to return as the death toll from the virus rose to 170 in China with over 8,000 people infected globally.
Another Bangladeshi student of the university, “Nawshad”, said 137 students from the country were stuck at the institution.
“None of us is infected. We want to go back before getting infected,” he said.
The outbreak also spread panic among them. “It can’t be explained. We get scared whenever someone sneezes or coughs,” he said.
Iftekharul Hassan Shaurab, a student at the Three Gorges University at Yichang city in Hubei, gave a similar account of their condition in a video posted on Facebook.
Habibur Rahman Habib of Hubei University of Technology said, “We want full check-up and treatment before going back to avoid the possibilities of spreading the disease in Bangladesh. We are ready to remain in isolation for 14 days as well.”
He said the university authorities were providing them with food but the amount was not sufficient. “They can’t do more as they have to bring the food from places 50 to 100 kilometres from here,” he added.
Central China University student Abdullah Al Fahim told the news agency: “I want to return as no one can say how the situation will be in future. But there must be arrangements for special observation once we return home. Otherwise it can be a disaster.”
