Risks of COVID19 outbreaks in Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh

The COVID-19 pandemic was confirmed to have started spreading in Bangladesh since March 2020. Since then the new infections grew exponentially and now the rate is highest in Asia along with wider community-level transmission. In Bangladesh, the preventive measures have been found challenging to implement due to a lack of general awareness of COVID-19 and the absence of a social safety net. In this situation, there is a concern about the heightened risk of infection and its aftermath in Rohingya refugee camps in the southwest part of Bangladesh, where the world’s largest refugee population resides. If COVID-19 starts spreading in the camps, there will have a devastating consequence given that almost one million people live in precarious and unhygienic conditions in an area of only five square kilometres. In this paper, the risk for the Rohingya refugee population of getting COVID-19 disease and the preparedness to diagnose new cases and their management by the facilities of government and international organizations are discussed. Several suggestions are also offered to protect the Rohingya refugee population from deadly COVID-19 disease.