As Covid Rampages Across Nepal, Workers Pay the Price

The Himalayan country is considering declaring a health emergency to help contain a second wave that experts say migrant laborers brought back from India.

KATHMANDU, Nepal — Ram Singh Karki escaped the first wave of India’s pandemic by boarding a crowded bus and crossing the border home to Nepal. Months later, as the rate of new infections fell, he returned to his job at a printing press in New Delhi, which had sustained his family for two decades and helped pay the school fees of his three children. Then India was swept by a second wave, and Mr. Karki wasn’t as lucky. He was infected last month. Hospitals in New Delhi were overwhelmed. When his oxygen level dropped, his manager arranged for an ambulance to take him back to the border. He crossed into Nepal, carrying with him just the clothes on his back — and the virus.