The novel coronavirus has been detected in one of the southern Bangladesh camps that are home to more than a million Rohingya refugees, officials said on Thursday, as humanitarian groups warned the infection could devastate the crowded settlement.
An ethnic Rohingya refugee and another person have tested positive for COVID-19, a senior Bangladeshi official and a UN spokeswoman said.
It was the first confirmed case in camps more densely populated than most crowded cities on Earth. “Today they have been taken to an isolation centre after they tested positive,” Mahbub Alam Talukder, the Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner, told Reuters by phone.