Bangladesh authorities say Mohammad Shahed, 43, who had evaded authorities for nine days, was caught trying to cross a river into neighboring India while wearing a burqa.
Shahed is accused of providing patients with false results of negative results for the new coronavirus, said Col. Ashique Billah, a spokesman for the country’s Rapid Action Battalion, an elite security force.
Shahed is also accused of charging people for virus treatments and documents that certify that they did not contract the coronavirus after agreeing with the government that it would provide those services free of charge.
Billah said two Shahed-owned medical facilities conducted some 4,000 genuine coronavirus tests, but falsified the results of another 6,500.
On Thursday, a court gave police the opportunity to hold Shahed in custody for 10 days for questioning. CNN is trying to reach out to an attorney representing Shahed for comment.
Shahed is not the first person in Bangladesh arrested on charges of committing medical fraud during the pandemic. Last week, owners of a different private test facility were arrested for providing false Covid-19 test certificates without testing people, authorities said.
Experts are concerned that these scams may deter people from being tested in Bangladesh, which already faces limited testing capacity. Since March, the government has evaluated an average of between 13,000 and 17,000 people per day, a comparatively small number for a country with a population of more than 168 million people.
Those seeking evidence have faced frustrating delays, and many have been forced to wait in long lines, sometimes overnight. The new scandal could affect public confidence in the tests and further discourage people from taking the test entirely.
More than 193,500 people in Bangladesh have contracted the virus, 2,457 of whom have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. But many are concerned that the actual number may be much higher due to Bangladesh’s limited testing capacity.
Critics have lashed out at the government for not doing more to protect vulnerable populations, especially in densely populated areas like the capital of Dhaka or along the Ganges River Delta.
Bangladesh was locked up for 68 days, but reopened on a “limited scale” on June 1 to help boost the economy, even though public health authorities are still identifying thousands of new cases each day.
Schools remain closed, but companies and government offices have opened.
South Asia is one of the current hot spots for coronaviruses in the world. India is expected to reach 1 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 in a matter of days, while Pakistan has registered more than 255,000 infections.
“Covid-19 is spreading at an alarming rate in South Asia, home to a quarter of humanity,” said John Fleming, who heads the health unit of the International Federation of Red Cross Societies and the Red Crescent (IFRC) for Asia-Pacific. a statement on Thursday.
“Now we urgently need to direct our attention to this region, urgently step up prevention measures and expand our resources to save thousands of lives,” said Fleming.
The pandemic has been particularly devastating to the Bangladesh economy. Although the country’s service and technology sectors have grown in recent years, apparel production remains the country’s economic backbone, with an estimated income of $ 30 billion a year.
Factories in the country had laid off or laid off more than half of the country’s nearly 4.1 million workers in April, the association said at the time.
This story has been updated to accurately reflect the day Shahed was arrested.
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