Bangladesh Live Updates

• Bangladesh has tightened a clampdown on seven villages after tens of thousands attended the funeral of a popular local cleric in spite of a nationwide lockdown to control the spread of the coronavirus, officials said on Monday.
• The massive gathering for funeral prayers for Maulana Jubayer Ahmed Ansari in Brahmanbaria district, about 60 kilometres east of the capital Dhaka, has raised concerns about the potential for a spike in infections in a country of 160 million people with poor medical infrastructure.
• Bangladesh has imposed a lockdown in a southern district that hosts more than a million Rohingya in an attempt to prevent the spread of the coronavirus in the crowded refugee camps.
• “Entry and exit from Cox’s Bazar district is prohibited from now on,” Kamal Hossain, chief of the district administration, said in a statement on Wednesday, after the country reported 218 cases of coronavirus and 20 deaths.
• Stringent legal actions are to be taken against those who violate the order, Hossain said, adding that the restriction had been imposed in the “public interest”.
• Bangladesh imposed a nationwide transport restriction alongside the closure of all non-essential public and private offices, as well as schools, in a bid to slow the spread of the virus.
• More than a million Rohingya have been living in squalid camps in the southeastern Bangladeshi district after they fled persecution in the predominantly Buddhist neighbor, Myanmar.