JAKARTA – Josna Begum lives with her son in a house with four other families in a slum in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, the world’s most densely populated city. “Distancing is impossible for us,” she said.
The 35-year-old, who occupies a single room with her 12-year-old son and earns $100 a month as a domestic worker, shares the single kitchen in the house with 22 other residents.
The Bangladeshi government this week ordered a nationwide shutdown to try to slow the spread of the coronavirus in a country considered at high risk because hundreds of thousands of overseas workers have returned home from Italy and other virus hot spots.