Biratnagar, April 23

Confirmation of a number of COVID-19 cases in Bhulke, Udayapur, has raised the fear of coronavirus in Nepali Army 18 Number Battalion adjoining the village.

According to sources, the Nepali Army battalion used to procure vegetable supplies from the village, just five hundred metres away.

The settlement adjoining Nuri Mosque of Bhulke cultivates vegetables and supplies the produce to markets as far as Gaighat bazaar.

“We have a contractor, who supplies us vegetables, but we don’t know from where he used to bring the vegetables for us,” said the chief of the battalion Krishna Sapkota. “We were alert from early on against the virus, yet we cannot totally rule out the risk,” he added. In view of the risk, an Nepali Army team deployed from Kathmandu collected swabs from 252 persons from the settlement near the barracks.

Meanwhile, Triyuga Municipality Mayor Baldev Chaudhary accused the provincial and central governments of failing to handle the issue seriously even after the pandemic appeared to have spread far and wide in Udayapur.

Of the total cases of coronavirus in the country, 28 were detected in Bhulke.

A version of this article appears in e-paper on April 23, 2020, of The Himalayan Times.