25/04/2020
Today is the 30th day of the lockdown. So far, Nepal has 42 cases of the coronavirus, but no patient is in intensive care. What's more, there are no deaths yet, and since getting infected, 5 of them have recovered. Our total tally is nothing compared to what other countries have been experiencing. The number of cases per million in Nepal is one of the lowest in the world, lower even than Bhutan's, which has just five cases.
Despite a sense of fear among the general population, if the official figures are anything to go by, its spread has been relatively contained. Of the 77 districts, the virus has been seen in nine districts. Twelve cases, or 40 percent of the total, were in one district, or to be more precise, one building. There have been just two known cases of local transmission. In the absence of evidence otherwise, one has to accept the government's claim that contact tracing of the known cases (except the last detected 14 cases) has been done as far as it has been possible and no positive cases were not detected among those traced.
One can argue that more tests could (or even would) detect more cases. But that can be argued for every country in the world bar maybe a very few like South Korea and Germany which had its own testing kit manufacturing in place along with exemplary health services. One can also argue that the government has not been efficient in efforts to contact trace, and there has been a lack of transparency in government activities. There is weight behind this argument, but this government is what we have, and its modus operandi cannot be expected to change overnight.
The end of Covid-19 is not imminent. Meanwhile, life cannot be put on hold without plans for a way out.