“The government’s policy (to contain the coronavirus) is not clear to people. The governments of Iran and Italy destroyed their countries and got isolated from the world by adopting the policy--‘no kit no corona, no test no corona and no patient no corona. But we’re also trying to manage everything following that hide-and-seek policy,” said party senior joint secretary general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi.

Speaking at a press conference through a videoconference from BNP’s Nayapaltan central office, he also alleged that the government is making evil efforts so that no-one can expose the government’s such policy over the infection by the deadly coronavirus. “The name of this hide-and-seek policy is rumour.”

The BNP leader said people have got deeply worried and frustrated as the ministers are making ‘irresponsible’ comments about the ‘false’ success of the government in tackling the virus by denying the reality.

He regretted that tough the government got two months to take necessary preparations to check the spread of coronavirus, it has failed to given attention to the matter.

Rizvi voiced concern that the country may face a grave danger as the government has failed to put those Bangladeshis returned home from different corona-infected countries under quarantine properly as per the guidelines of the WHO.

He said the government still lacks both preparations and coordination to tackle such a disaster. “There’s no adequate equipment and management to detect the infected patients…the statistics the government is giving without testing system is not credible to people.”

The BNP leader said though the government said no corona patient detected over the two consecutive days, media are running news on the deaths of people from cold, coughing and respiratory problems. “The newspapers published the reports on deaths of five people having the coronavirus symptoms over the last 24 hours.”

Stating that around 6.65 lakh people returned to Bangladesh from abroad since the last week of January, he said these people and those came in contact to them are not yet tested. “These unmarked people are at risk of spreading the virus to a geometric rate in society.”