Poor screening at land ports causes concern

Hundreds of passengers entering Bangladesh through land ports every day from India are being sent to their homes without proper screening amid the increasing trend in the bordering country.

 

While experts are calling for sealing off the border, the authorities seem shambolic in their approach to people coming back home from India, a country that is counting the world’s highest number of daily new infections at present.

 

The health officials at the Benapol land port in Sharsa upazila of Jashore said on Saturday that they received eight Covid positive patients from India since April 20 and sent them to the district hospital.

 

They said 29 others were not carrying mandatory negative RT-PCR Covid test certificates but were allowed in and were sent to institutional quarantine for two to three days until another test was performed.

 

Both Sharsha upazila nirbahi officer Mir Alif Reza and upazila health and family planning officer Yusuf Ali said they were letting the passengers with RT-PCR negative reports to go home but it was not sure whether they were maintaining home quarantine.

 

Health officials warned that without strict monitoring on the passengers arriving from India and the failure to ensure their institutional quarantine, the Covid situation in Bangladesh would exacerbate.

 

Abul Bashar Mohammed Khurshid Alam, the director general of the Directorate General of Health Services, told on Saturday they recommended in an inter-ministrial meeting chaired by the cabinet secretary Khandker Anwarul Islam on April 22 a complete shutdown of the border with India for now and an intensification of the existing lockdown across the country for one more week to curb the spread of the virus.

Epidemiologist Be-Nazir Ahmed also expressed fear that the so-called Indian variant of coronavirus, which is reportedly more fatal and contagious and which is already wreaking havoc in the bordering country, would enter Bangladesh through people crossing the border, which might spell disaster for the country.

 

‘It will bring about a disastrous consequence when we are also witnessing a surge in Covid cases and deaths in recent time,’ said Be-Nazir, a former director of disease control at the DGHS.

 

‘It will be unwise to keep the border open,’ he said.

 

The immigration police of the Special Branch said 98 per cent of the passengers were travelling through the Benapol port mainly for medical purpose and travel through the Burimari, Banglabandha, Biral, Akharura, Tamabil and Shewla were allowed for now while rest of the ports were closed from the Indian side.

 

Benapol port health monitoring officials spotted five Covid positive cases on Friday when 610 people arrived from Indian cities. The Covid patients were sent to the district hospital while two others who were accompanying the five patients were sent to an isolation centre.

 

On Saturday, 450 other passengers arrived until 5:00pm and at least six of them were not carrying RT-PCR test reports and were sent to institutional quarantine.

 

The Benapol port officials said 1,594 passengers entered Bangladesh between April 19 and April 22 from India, and three of them were carrying Covid positive certificate and 23 other had no valid test report with them.

 

The officials said 5,486 people enter into Bangladesh and 4,342 others left for India between April 12 and April 23 alone through the Benapol port.

 

In the night of April 22, a virtual meeting with the stakeholders chaired by the foreign minister, AK Abdul Momen, however, decided that the Bangladeshi stranded in India would be allowed to arrive through the land ports but local authorities would ensre their 14-day mandatory institutional quarantine.

 

Khurshid Alam, the director general of the DGSH, said the statistics showed a strict lockdown could curb the spread of the infection but in reality such strictness is nowhere to found.

 

One named Sulayman Hossain of Jashore, who arrived on Friday, said that he spent his day at home and his motor-part store on RN Road in the district headquarters for the day.

 

He said there were two types of coronavirus certificates in West Bengal, which people were collecting for their immigration at ports.

 

‘For one, a person does not need to provide samples but only money to get a negative certificate while for the other, one needs to pay money and get the clinical report,’ he added.

 

He said that the immigration of both the countries would only check the date of the report someone was carrying during travel.

 

Another Bangladeshi Abdul Mannan Sheikh of Bagherhat said while crossing the border that he spent four days in a quarantine facility in Benapol after his report from an Indian government hospital did not appear online timely.

 

He alleged that he could have avoided the mandatory quarantine if he had paid Tk 2,000 but he did not pay and remained in quarantine at a hotel approved by the government where he had to spend Tk 5,000 for his stay. 

 

The Civil Aviation Authorities, Bangladesh has also extended the operation of special flights till April 28 due to the extension of countrywide restrictions for another week from April 21.

 

The CAAB also allowed only point-to-point passengers and said that the passengers of China, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arab, Oman, Qatar, Singapore and the UAE can be carried to and from Dhaka.

 

Oman, meanwhile, has banned the entry of travellers from Bangladesh as well as India and Pakistan, effective from April 24 in an effort to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus.

 

Bangladesh has meanwhile allowed operations of domestic flights, except to and from Cox’s Bazar, on six other routes.