Bangladesh classifies Covid-19 as ‘communicable disease’

Bangladesh government has put Covid-19 on its list of communicable diseases, following a High Court directive aimed to scale up efforts to contain the pandemic.

The Health Ministry issued a gazette, in line with the Communicable Diseases (Prevention, Control and Eradication) Act 2018, in this regard on March 19 and it was published on Monday.

The gazette also mentioned March 8 as the starting point of the coronavirus outbreak in the country. Bangladesh’s first Covid-19 case was detected that day.

Apart from Covid-19, the list of communicable diseases also include Nipah, influenza, avian influenza or bird flu, swine flu, anthrax, malaria, diarrhoea, kala-azar, dengue, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, viral hepatitis, acute respiratory infection, meningitis, typhoid, leprosy, filariasis, leptospirosis, poliomyelitis, Ebola, Zika, chikungunya, MERS-CoV and Japanese encephalitis.

After the World Health Organization classified the novel coronavirus outbreak as a pandemic, the High Court on March 18 had directed the government to issue a gazette notification declaring the diease a communicable one for Bangladesh.

Since March 8, when Bangladesh detected the first Covid-19 case, authorities have confirmed 33 known cases, three deaths and five recoveries until Monday.

The global pandemic, since it started in China’s Wuhan city in late December last year, has infected more than 372,200 people so far and killed over 16,300 in 195 countries and territories globally as of Monday, according to worldometer.