Infections surge in Nepal

Corona virus

Authorities in Nepal were grappling to contain the rapid rise of Covid-19 cases with experts fearing that thousands of people in the Himalayan state have caught the more infectious mutant strains emerging out of India. Nepal, which shares a long porous border with India, reported 3,032 new infections on Sunday, the highest daily surge recorded this year. It took the total caseload since the pandemic first struck Nepal to 300,119, and there have so far been 3,164 deaths, according to government data. “We have detected the UK variant and the double mutant variant detected in India,” Krishna Prasad Paudel, the director of Nepal’s Epidemiology and Disease Control Department said adding that experts were checking for other variants too. Nepal launched its vaccination campaign in January and gave shots to 1.9mn people, all provided by India and China. But health experts feared that continuation of the vaccination drive was uncertain after officials had failed to procure more vaccine shots from India or any other source. Over 90 developing nations, including Nepal, rely on India, home to the Serum Institute, the world’s largest vaccine maker, for the doses to protect their own populations, but India has now prioritised its own needs as a second wave of the epidemic there has run out of control. “The virus is mutating very fast...what started in India has now entered Nepal too,” said Rabindra Pandey, a public health expert, adding that if the trend continued for a week then new patients will be unable to find any beds as hospitals were already stretched. Wedged between China and India, Nepal shares a 1,751km border with its southern neighbour India. The border was closed for some time during a lockdown last year, when the first wave of the epidemic struck, but it has since been reopened.