Historically, people have for a long time been using the seas to migrate perilously in unseaworthy boats and risking their lives primarily for safe havens when fleeing persecution or for gaining better economic opportunities in countries of destination. This kind of unsafe migration by sea continues even in the challenging times of countries trying to manage the global pandemic Covid-19. Governing maritime movements is as it is a complex challenge and Covid-19, by raising public health concerns and triggering border-closures across the world, has added to its complexity.

Introduction: Two billion people are currently affected by complex humanitarian emergencies (CHEs) resulting from natural disasters and armed confl ict. Many have been displaced into crowded camps with poor access to water, sanitation, and health care. Humanitarian response is challenging under these circumstances, raising concern about the impact of COVID-19 on crisis-aff ected populations. Methods: This article examines CHEs in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, and Yemen, where protracted crises have displaced millions of people.

Multifaceted international and national collaborative responses and progress have sustained the world’s largest densely populated refugee camps in the Cox’s Bazar district, Bangladesh. Yet, the Rohingyas remain in an extremely precarious situation during the COVID-19 pandemic. The refugees are living in highly challenging circumstances of water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), natural disasters of the monsoon season as well as existing health and educational challenges of HIV, malnutrition and other diseases.

Abstract: Community transmission of COVID-19 is happening in Bangladesh—the country which did not have a noteworthy health policy and legislative structures to combat a pandemic like COVID-19. Early strategic planning and groundwork for evolving and established challenges are crucial to assemble resources and react in an appropriate timely manner.

Background COVID-19 could have even more dire consequences in refugees camps than in general populations. Bangladesh has confirmed COVID-19 cases and hosts almost 1 million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, with 600,000 concentrated in the Kutupalong-Balukhali Expansion Site (mean age, 21 years; standard deviation [SD], 18 years; 52% female). Projections of the potential COVID-19 burden, epidemic speed, and healthcare needs in such settings are critical for preparedness planning.

Bangladesh reported the first three laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases on March 8, 2020 in Dhaka and Narayanganj cities. As of April 8, 2020, 218 confirmed cases across the country, they have mostly detected from Dhaka (56.4%) and Narayanganj (21%) cities where the hotspots of an outbreak of COVID-19 disease. There were 6 cases in Dhaka district excluding metropolitan areas and rest of 43 (20%) cases in the 19 other regions. Local government-enforced completely shut down the hotspots areas on April 8 2020. However, peoples from hotspots travelled openly to the other districts.

This study determined five coding-complete genome sequences of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) strains isolated from oropharyngeal swab specimens of Bangladeshi patients who were diagnosed with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and had no travel history. © 2020 Khan et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.