by Staff Correspondent in Dhaka;

Tens of thousands of people have been leaving the cities for home villages to celebrate the Muslims’ festival of Eid-al-Fitr defying restrictions that the government imposed to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Most of them left the capital Dhaka with whatever means of transport they could manage in absence of long-haul buses, trains and regular ferry services on the riverine routes.

The Eid is supposed to be celebrated on May 13 or 14 subject to the sighting of the Moon of Arabic month of Shwal.

South-bound travellers were seen boarding crowded ferries, plying to cater emergency road transport vehicles, at Mawa and Paturia ghats on the bank of the river Padma.

They are seemingly hardly bother the health guidelines set by the government amid the novel coronavirus pandemic that killed more than 12,000 people since the virus was traced in Bangladesh in March last year.

The government fear further rise in the number of infection from the virus, as Bangladeshi is facing the second wave of it with neighbouring India struggling to handle the situation worsened since March.

“It is a matter of grave concern if a third wave of the virus arrive because of the Eid journey by thousands of home-goers,” said ABM Khurshid Alam told reporters in Dhaka.

The second wave of the virus is still somewhat controlled in Bangladesh, he added.

Meanwhile, the government’s health department said the death toll from the virus have surpassed to 12,000 with 33 more fatalities reported in the last 24 hours until Tuesday.

The death rate is counted at 1.55 percent.

Some 1,230 new infections from among 14,184 samples were reported during this time, taking the total number infections to 776,257, according to the health department’s release.

The current positivity rate is 8.67 percent while the total positivity rate stands at 13.71 percent.

The recovery count stands at 715,321 with some 3,044 Covid-19 patients recovering in the past 24 hours.

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