By Our Reporter
The government has totally failed in the fight against the Covid-19, the rising cases of infections and deaths across the country; including the Kathmandu Valley is a testimony to this.
Moreover, the government wasted 120 days of the lockdown that had begun on March 24 and lifted on July 21. Now when the cases started surging in Kathmandu and other cities, there has been a shortage of isolation wards, showing that the government made no meaningful preparation to contain the virus during the lockdown.
In lack of isolation wards in the valley, the government had to halt the rescue of the Nepalis from abroad last week. Now when the cases surpassed 3400 in the Kathmandu Valley and 33,533 across the nation, prompting the local administrations in the Kathmandu Valley and elsewhere to impose restrictions on the movements of people and traffic, the government has started making plans to build isolation wards, which should have been built during the first phase of lockdown.
But instead of preparing the required infrastructure to fight the Covid-19, the government wasted time in taking controversial decisions like amending the constitution and breaking other parties. Even the nationwide lockdown was floated by Prime Minister KP Oli himself as he sent lawmakers Mahesh Basnet, Kishan Shrestha and former police chief to lift lawmakers of Federal Socialist Party from Mahottari to break the party.
Moreover, the leaders of the ruling party engaged in intra-party wrangling diverting the government attention towards find ways to stick in power rather than making preparations to fight the virus.
Had the government checked the unlawful entry of people from the Nepal-India border, kept all those who entered Nepal from India in quarantine for 14 days and tightened the entry points to Kathmandu, the situation would not have been this worse. Again, many people in government took the crisis as a time to make a fast buck. The corruption in the purchase of the medicines and the rescue of Nepalis from abroad only tarnished the image of the government. Hence, the government and the NCP in the whole should be blamed for the failure.
As of Tuesday, the cases of COVID-19 reached 33,533 with 164 deaths. The three districts of the valley have extended the restrictions by another week as the cases continued to increase.
On Tuesday, 855 new cases of COVID-19 were confirmed in the country with seven more deaths. Of the total new cases, 232 were recorded in the Kathmandu Valley, the highest single-day tally reported till now. Of them, 199 were detected in Kathmandu, 19 in Lalitpur and 14 in Bhaktapur districts. Every day, at least over 700 new patients are traced with 743 on Monday.
Dr Jos Vandelaer, World Health Organisation (WHO) Representative in Nepal, said that the currently seen resurgence could be just a start and the situation could get worse in the coming weeks and months. Cases are increasing and so is a risk, however, he urged everyone not to panic.
When there were no required isolation wards, the government decided to not hospitalise asymptomatic COVID-19 patients as the number of active COVID-19 cases continues to surge across the nation. As of Monday, 4,561 patients were under home isolation.
People are getting panicky thinking that they will not get beds in the hospital if they tested positive for COVID-19. However, public health experts have suggested that home isolation is the best place for getting cured of COVID-19 if the patients do not show any symptoms.
People’s Review Print Edition
Login to add a comment