Kathmandu. Aug 10. Bangladesh has started vaccinating the Rohingya refugees amidst surge in coronavirus cases.

There is high risk at the refugee camps as around 1 million refugees have been residing.

The highly transmissible delta variant is driving an infection surge across Bangladesh, with around 20,000 infections and 200 deaths recorded so far in Cox’s Bazar district.

The vaccination was initiated by the government’s Civil Surgeon’s office in Cox’s Bazar and aid agencies that spread across 34 camps.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said to the Associated Press that more than 65,000 of the nearly 900,000 refugees will be vaccinated.

Less than 5% of the population in Bangladesh have been fully vaccinated. Bangladesh faced another problem when India stopped exporting vaccines. Prime minister Sheikh Hasina sought to bring vaccines from other sources such as China, after which they started inoculating the public with the Chinese vaccine, ‘Sinopharm’.

It is said that more than 700,000 Rohingya fled Buddhist-majority Myanmar in 2017 as a harsh military crackdown was waged against the ethnic group following an attack by insurgents. The 2017 crackdown included rapes, killings and the torching of thousands of homes, and was termed ethnic cleansing by global rights groups and the United Nations.

The people then fled Myanmar to seek refuge at Bangladesh. While Bangladesh and Myanmar have agreed on repatriations, the Rohingya refugees are scared to return home.