Bangladesh is attempting to evacuate 2.2 million people to safety, officials said. Indian state West Bengal has been evacuating over 200,000 people overnight.
The Associated Press
The densely populated regions are home to some of the most vulnerable communities in South Asia: poor fishing communities in the Sunderbans and over a million Rohingya refugees living in the crowded camps in Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh. Bangladesh is attempting to evacuate 2.2 million people to safety. India's West Bengal state moved nearly 300,000 and Odisha state another 148,486 people, officials said.
“We know that if people are forced to seek communal shelter, they’ll be unable to maintain physical distancing and run the risk of contracting or transmitting the virus," said Pereira.Sobrato Das, a fisherman in Mousuni Island in India, close to the Sunderbans, described the shelters as crowded and said “very few people are wearing masks.”
Some cyclone shelters in West Bengal were being used for quarantining COVID-19 patients and migrant workers returning to their homes. The state government asked for trains transporting migrants to be suspended, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said. Some schools were turned into shelters, news reports said.In the seaside resort of Digha, many people feared going to the shelters, fisherman Debasis Shyamal said.
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