The government is likely go for zone wise lockdown on the basis of the severity of the pandemic, from next week.

However, work is still in progress to finalise the criteria for the zone wise areas – red, yellow, and green – which may complete shortly, sources said.

The government on June 1 decided to divide areas, hit hard by Covid-19 to be put under lockdown in order to prevent the virus from transmitting further.

The ministry is working for finalising the zoning wise lockdown plan which will be implemented across Bangladesh from next week, State Minister for Public Administration Farhad Hossain told on Friday.

The plan, once implemented, will help Bangladesh control the spread of Covid-19 transmission more efficiently, the State Minister Farhad Hossain added.

Bangladesh, with Friday’s development, has become one of the top 20 countries with the highest number of positive Covid-19 cases worldwide, according to data aggregation website Worldometer as of Friday 5pm.

According to the government plan, hotspots with the highest number of cases will be marked as red zones while areas with a limited number of cases as yellow zones and green zones will be areas with zero confirmed cases in the last 21 days.

If there are over 40 Covid-19 patients in every one lakh population that will be a red zone.

“We will start implementing the plan with hotspots like the five city corporations – Dhaka north and south, Chittagong, Gazipur and Narayanganj – as the numbers of positive cases is higher in these areas,” said Farhad.