Dhangadhi, January 9
Covid-19 cases are increasing in the Sudurpaschim province with over 100 cases being reported from the province on a daily basis.
The provincial health officials are saying the rise in cases is directly proportional to the rise in the number of Nepali migrant workers coming back to Nepal from India. In the past few weeks, India has reported as many as 100,000 cases a day.
The Sudurpaschim province, on Saturday, reported 133 Covid-19 cases, out of which 125 people had come from India. The province reported 101 cases on Friday, out of which 97 had come from India.
However, as cases are increasing, the construction of quarantine centres in Kailali and Kanchanpur has not been completed yet. The two quarantine centres were built to hold 1,000 patients each.
Even though the officials constructing the centres say the construction is in the last stage, health officials say they will need time to gather all health equipment and medicines to prepare for another Covid-19 wave.
Narendra Karki from the province’s Social Development Ministry says the isolation centre in Dhangadhi is full of Covid-19 patients. He says as the 100-bed centre is full, they are facing issues regarding places to put patients who will contract the virus in the coming days.
He says that talks are underway to use Gota Medical College and the province’s herbal medicine centre to keep Covid-19 patients.
What makes things worse is Nepali officials do not know that if these people are coming to Nepal with the Omicron variant that has spread rapidly across India. Due to the lack of proper infrastructure in the province, officials have to send the samples to Kathmandu to find out if these people had the Omicron variant.
They did send 16 samples to Kathmandu, but none of them was the Omicron variant, say health officials from the province.
A further 116 samples have been sent to Kathmandu for the test.
