Lockdown = Breakdown

After a Cabinet meeting on Saturday night extended the COVID-19 lockdown for the eighth time till 14 June, there has been uproar on Nepal’s cybersphere.

Critics have called the extension “kneejerk” and “unnecessary” not taking account the economic fallout of the lockdown. 

Reports said that although the high-level Coronavirus Control and Management Taskforce has been suggesting a partial and geographical relaxation of the lockdown, the government appears to have decided that given the growing number of confirmed cases and an additional fatality on Saturday it would extend the blanket nationwide closure.

Reduce harm, Editorial

3rd month of lockdown, Sonia Awale

The Ministry of Health confirmed on Saturday that the number of people testing positive for coronavirus in Nepal had reached 1,402 with 7 deaths so far. Nepal is now showing an increase of about 200 new cases per day.

Most of those test positive are of migrant workers who have returned from India or those who were in close contact with them. A majority are in the west and central Tarai districts, and all the fatalities were confirmed to have COVID-19 in swab tests taken after they died.

Some public health experts have gone on social media to call the government’s latest extension “ill-advised” and that there would be far more deaths from the impact of the lockdown itself than from COVID-19. By the time the current extension ends, Nepal will have been in lockdown for 82 days.

Unlock the country in phases, Editorial

Other commentators called the government’s move “not a strategy but a tragedy”, or “the lockdown will lead to economic breakdown”. The government has been criticised for not ensuring that there are adequate test PCR test kits, for a shortage of RNA extractors, other reagents necessary to conduct the tests, and for the controversial decision to push unreliable rapid diagnostic tests. 

Quarantine facilities are also said to be squalid and turning into hotbeds for infection. Tens of thousands of migrant workers returning home have also been stopped at provincial borders in western Nepal, and are camped out on the sides of highways with inadequate food and water.

The government decision also appears to be influenced by a surge in coronavirus cases and deaths in India, and the growing number of Nepali migrant workers arriving at the border after India eased train services and public transport. There are more than 2 million Nepali seasonal migrants in India, and at 100,000 are estimated to have returned in the past two months with many more on the way.

India has seen the highest daily increase of nearly 8,000 cases on 30 May, and 15,000 new confirmed cases on Friday and Saturday. The number of those who have died of COVID-19 in India has crossed 5,000, with most of the deaths in Maharastra. In the two Indian states bordering Nepal, Uttar Pradesh has seen 2,800 cases and 198 deaths and there are 2,150 cases and 15 fatalities in Bihar.

Despite this, India has allowed some domestic flights and train services to resume, and a partial opening of businesses including malls, hotels from 8 June – even though its lockdown has been extended till 30 June.

The government announced on Saturday that domestic and international flights, and public transport would continue to be closed till 30 June, and the country’s international border would be also be sealed for travellers till that date.

At the same time, however, the government is said to have approved a taskforce report for a timetable to bring back a first batch of 25,000 Nepalis stranded abroad on a priority bases. Nepal’s embassies abroad are supposed to finalise this week a list of undocumented workers, those whose contracts have expired, pregnant women and the disabled to be flown home first. 

Those whose employers will not pay for their return tickets will have to pay for it themsleves, as well as for a temporary quarantine in designated hotels in Kathmandu as they arrive. Those who cannot afford hotels in Kathmandu will be taken to holding centres for PCR testing while they await transport province-by-province, the government said.

from Nepali Times https://ift.tt/3cklyAG
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