A nation locked between the world’s most populous countries, Nepal is struggling to reign in the COVID-19 outbreak, with mounting cases and stagnant testing.
By Tariq Hashmat
On January 23, 2020, barely three weeks after China announced the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, Nepal had the unfortunate predicament of being the first South Asian country to deal with COVID-19. Land borders with China were shut. The patient, a returnee from France, recovered in a week’s time, and the country was spared from another case for almost two months.
Over the following months, the country has been in and out of a total lockdown, scaled up, and then stagnated testing, and is now struggling as the daily cases continue to rise. Health Analytics Asia looks at the COVID numbers in the landlocked nation.
The country implemented a total lockdown on March 24. This helped in reducing the number of cases reported on a daily basis. In the 120-day lockdown, Nepal’s case tally rose by 2650, from 178 cases on March 24 to 2828 cases on July 21. However, things soon took a turn for worse. In a span of 60 days, since the end of lockdown, cases rose by a whopping 58,765.
Tested, but not enough
Nepal’s first case was confirmed only by a lab in Hong Kong as the country’s laboratories did not have the reagents required to conduct tests for COVID-19. Early border closures, along with stringent and prolonged nationwide lockdown, were seen as an opportunity to establish and expand testing capabilities to get a hold of the infection. Though Nepal did scale-up testing, daily tests declined in the last month of lockdown. Testing was scaled up since the beginning of August again, with an average of over 10,000 tests daily.
However, a total positivity rate (TPR) higher than 5 percent, and still rising, indicates that Nepal’s testing is clearly not enough. Further complicating the situation, testing declined in September, despite the rise in cases and increasing TPR. With only 17 designated laboratories, COVID-19 testing is far from ideal in the Himalayan nation of over 29 million.
Economic downturn
As Nepal’s economy tries to weather the pandemic shock, the country’s central bank reported that 22.5 percent of the country’s workforce (mostly in tourism and hospitality) has been laid off. There has been an average salary cut of 18 percent, while a massive 61 percent of businesses have been forced to shut down completely.
A World Bank report cautions that the pandemic could push nearly a third of the country’s population below the poverty line. The alarm bells are ringing loud.
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