Ignorance–of both govt and public–resulted in Covid-19 surge in Nepal

The world is in terror. Innocents are brutally finished every day. No women or children are spared. It asphyxiates you till you welcome your destiny of expiration. You struggle to screech for help, but you fail to do so because that is what it is good at, ceasing breath. It chokes your dreams, your emotions, your agony, your life.

Why did I deserve it, you ask? It is because you acted normal. You decided to meet up with your friends. You planned on having a get-together with your family and relatives. You proposed the idea of spending a day with your loved one, holding hands. You debate if this is unfair. It is foolish of you that you do not realise this is what it hates, things you normally did before it wrote its dominion. This is what drives it crazy. It expects you to fear it and change yourself. You either give it to it or else it will be difficult for you to even gasp when you find out it has inserted itself within you because that is what it is good at, ceasing breath.

Like every country, Nepal is also struggling with the impacts of Covid-19, in recent days, even more. The country’s case-to-test ratio jumped from 0.27 to 0.40 in just a matter of a month. The recovery percentage fell from 93.8 on average to 76.3 over a 28-day period. For a limited and developing country, it seems like a holocaust.

Behind this surge, the government, apparently, is responsible. But, the public should also be blamed equally.

Alarming rise

Taking about the numbers of the last week of April and the month of May, a significant rise is visible. The average cases of the last week of April were around 2,523 per 9,273 average tests, which is 27% of the total tests performed.  A staggering 9,387 cases were recorded per 20,001 tests on the last day of the first week of May. With an increase in the tests, the cases seem to go parallel with the mid-week of May, recording 4,131 cases per 12,597 tests on average. The case-to-test ratio was 0.47 which is not a number to ignore. The number was enough evidence in itself to prove that the cases had increased by over 300% when the tests had only doubled. Reaching the end of this month, the ratio has dropped down to 0.40, but the death cases are rapid with an average of 183 people a day. 

With the scarcity of proper medication, health facilities, and lack of oxygen cylinders, the recovery rate seems to be going downhill while the death cases are taking big leaps. The statistics reported a 93.86% recovery rate for the last week of April while it dropped to a staggering 82% in just a week. If numbers are to be considered, the difference between the two months’ recovery cases were 342 and 7,664, which seems like an improvement at the first glance, but people fail to consider that the infected cases were low too when the recovery cases were low. The recovery percentage reveals it all.

Factors behind

The question here is why this is increasing. What instigated the numbers? What happened to the country that had managed to suppress the number of cases to around 200 per day? A simple yet truthful answer would be ignorance, both from the state level as well as the personal level.

Vehicles are seen obstructed during a rally against the dissolution of the House of Representatives, on Sunday, December 27, 2020.

The government was wary enough about the situation that India was facing. The new variant of the virus sweeping the Indian population was evident. The government should have ordered the sealing of all the borders there and then. But, since almost everything – from salt to crude oil –  is imported from India, the government was not sure if that would have been the right thing to do.

The result: cases spread from India. Every day, the cases of the new variant started increasing in Nepal. The age group of 19-30 was mostly affected contrary to the previous variant which targeted old people. Each successive day, the rise was significantly visible, and the death cases were hard to ignore, which finally led the government to impose lockdown measures in the hard-hit areas which included Kathmandu, the highest case recording district, an epicentre.

There is little to blame the government here. Sealed borders meant a scarcity of supplies for which the government would have to take the blame again someday. They seem to have no options.

But, we did. Yes, we should work to preserve our culture and tradition, but was it even sensible at all to hold jatras that included many public gatherings with almost no social distancing and constant physical touch? How would you convince the importance of political rallies around the country with only masks as a precaution, that too below the nose? How ignorant and unreasonable does one have to be to revolt against the government’s request to hold jatras in a small number? The cases rose from 3,422 before the gatherings to 7,384. Is it only the government that needs to take the blame? Yes, if we are blind and ignorant enough.