The government will keep those who will return to Bangladesh under observation before China lifts the ongoing 14-day restriction to avoid any risk, says Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen.
His remarks came while speaking to the media in Dhaka on Wednesday (Jan 29), reports UNB.
“We’re not delaying. We’re fully ready to bring them (Bangladesh citizens) back once China allows,” he said.
Momen said the Chinese government remains very strict in following the 14-day quarantine period and did not even accept the proposals of Japan and the USA to take back their nationals.
However, the US and Japan evacuated their nationals from a quarantined city, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
Beijing’s pledge to slay the “devil” coronavirus has won the trust of the World Health Organization (WHO) but confirmation of another 1,459 cases - taking the total to 5,974 in China - only fueled public alarm around the world.
Deaths from the flu-like virus also rose to 132.
Almost all have been in the central province of Hubei, the capital of which is Wuhan, where the virus emerged last month in a live wild animal market.
The situation remained “grim and complex”, Chinese President Xi Jinping acknowledged.
The number of cases in China now exceeds its tally of 5,327 infected with the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) coronavirus that killed about 800 people globally in 2002 and 2003.
While some experts believe the new strain, known as “2019-nCoV”, is not as deadly as SARS, alarm has grown over its rapid spread and many unknown attributes, such as how lethal it is.
Like other respiratory infections, it is spread by droplets from coughs and sneezes, with an incubation time between one and 14 days. There are signs it may spread before symptoms show.
About 60 cases, but no deaths, have been reported in 15 other countries, including the United States, France and Singapore.
In the first known cases in the Middle East, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) diagnosed four members of a Chinese family who arrived from Wuhan with the coronavirus.