Kathmandu, April 4

The Nepali Congress today issued a press release urging the government to take the local transmission of coronavirus in Kailali district seriously and to ramp up COVID-19 tests.

The NC said that the woman from Kailali, who contracted coronavirus from her brother-in-law, had no travel history, and it was because of lack of seriousness on the part of the government that she got the virus from her family member who had returned from the UAE.

Had the government suspended international flights on time, placed foreign returnees in compulsory quarantine and ramped up COV- ID-19 testing, the country would not have reached this stage of increased risk of infection, the NC stated. “We appeal to the government to immediately test all family members of infected people, and people they came in contact with,” the release stated.

It asked the government to issue notices to all returnees from foreign countries to stay in quarantine and urged the federal government to mobilise local governments to implement quarantine rules.

The NC said the government should work on a war footing to prevent the spread of the virus or else COVID-19 could soon spread to the community and the consequence would be dreadful.

A version of this article appears in e-paper on April 05, 2020 of The Himalayan Times.