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Earlier on Friday, Health Minister Zahid Maleque said a total of 361 Bangladeshis would be flown back as part of a voluntary evacuation.

Foreign ministry officials, however, said 49 Bangladeshis did not want to return.

Later in the evening, the health minister told journalists that they had managed to complete every arrangement inside the camp.

“We have served necessary things for the returnees. Our team would solve all other problems,” the minister said.

SUSPECTED CASES ROSE TO 10

With the eight admitted to hospitals yesterday, the number of suspected case of novel coronavirus infection has rose to 10, according to the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR).

On Thursday, a Chinese national was admitted to a hospital with fever while a Bangladeshi software engineer with symptom of fever was sent to Kurmitola General Hospital after he returned from China.

The IEDCR has collected samples from the new eight suspected returnees for test yesterday.

ASM Alamgir, principal scientific officer of IEDCR, told The Daily Star, “We would take two to three days to know the test result.”

The IEDCR has the only coronavirus test facility in the country.

Asked whether it was enough, Alamgir said when such a pandemic case was found in 100 to 200 cases, it meant transmission to locality. In such a situation, there would be no need to test every case.

He urged relatives of the returnees to keep patience and not to gather in front of the camp.

We would brief about their health status daily in a particular time, he added.

Besides Kurmitola General Hospital and CMH Dhaka, the authorities have designated five beds to each government hospital across the country.

Meanwhile, the number of deaths from the coronavirus epidemic in China rose to 259 with 137 proven cases of transmission in around two dozen countries.