Urging the government to gear up the mass vaccination drive to return to normalcy, Jatiya Party Chairman GM Quader on Friday said lockdown is not a solution to the current Covid crisis in Bangladesh.

“Lockdown and curfew are not a solution to the current (Covid) situation in our country. The mass vaccination drive needs to be strengthened further …. the public life will be normal only with that,” he said in a statement.

The Jatiya Party chief called upon the government to set up field hospitals with the required number of doctors and health workers in the virus-hit areas to ensure proper treatment of people. “It’ll help protect people’s lives and ease their sufferings.”

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He said a lockdown is in force now in the country, but it is not possible to keep people at home. "Lockdown won’t be successful in Bangladesh given our reality.”

Quoting the findings of different studies, Quader said around 2.5 crore people of the country have come down below the poverty line afresh in the one year of corona pandemic alongside previous 3.5 poor people.

“Most of the poor people don’t have food at home and money in their pockets to buy medicines and baby food.  So, it’s not possible to keep such people at home by enforcing a lockdown,” he observed.

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The Jatiya Party chairman said the assistance being provided by the government is too inadequate while a large part of it is not reaching the real poor. “So, in the current situation of our country, any lockdown and curfew can’t give any solution to the crisis.”

Amid the lockdown, he said, around 15,000 people are being infected daily with the coronavirus and over 200 deaths are being reported.

GM Quader said the infections and mortality are on the rise and there is no visible sign of decline in the virus infection. “So, the Covid situation is not improving with the lockdown, but it has increased the misery of the working people several times. Every day, the number of poor people is rising.”