Lockdown again?

COVID-19 spread goes beyond control in Kathmandu

By Our Reporter 

The authorities in the Health Ministry are repeatedly saying that the Ministry has recommended the government to impose lockdown if the Covid-19 active cases will cross 25 thousand. At that stage, the pandemic will be beyound the control of the government’s mechanism, therefore, lockdown is inevitable, they are saying. Presently, active cases are above 20 thousand.

Sure, the government and its mechanisms have now become ineffective in controlling the spread of COVID-19 in Kathmandu and other major cities because of their wrong approach to handle it.

The government has been taking one wrong strategy after another letting the virus spread in densely populated areas. The contract tracing, which is key to control the spread of the virus, is now ineffective or does not exist at all, and it is the main reason for the rising cases in the Kathmandu Valley. In absence of effective contract tracing, everyday tests have been limited to 10,000, less than half of the total testing capacity. But in Kathmandu getting, one has to wait for days to get tested due to the pressure of increasing cases.

Every day over 1300 new cases are traced across the country with over 60 per cent of them in the Kathmandu Valley alone. Of the 1513 new cases traced on Tuesday, 934 were from the Kathmandu Valley.

Of the 10,891 Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) tests carried out in the last 24 hours, 1,513 persons were found with COVID-19 infection, Dr Jageshwor Gautam, MoHP Spokesperson at the daily press briefing said on Tuesday.

Of the 934 new cases traced in the Kathmandu Valley, 747 cases were detected in Kathmandu, 73 in Bhaktapur and 114 Lalitpur. This showed that the capital city has become a new epicentre of the virus.

As of Tuesday, the Kathmandu Valley’s total caseload has reached 23,258 with 18,879 cases in Kathmandu, 2,345 in Lalitpur and 2034 in Bhaktapur district. The national tally reached 76,258 with 491 deaths on Tuesday.

Currently, there are 20, 396 active cases of COVID-19, of which 9,699 patients are in institutional isolation and 10,707 are in home isolation. Of the active cases, 213 patients are in the intensive care units (ICU) of hospitals while 34 are receiving treatment with ventilator support.

The health experts a few days ago said that the country should go for lockdown if the active cases cross 25,000 marks, and the mark is likely to meet in the next 10 days considering the increasing rate of infection, mostly in the capital city. This means the people will be prevented from marking Dashain and Tihar festivals as they are likely to be forced to stay home at that time.

Had the government strictly monitored the entry points of the valley, the situation would not have been this worse. Therefore, the government should be blamed for the increasing cases of COVID-19 in Nepal.

People’s Review Print Edition