Surkhet, May 4

In the wake of a huge spike in confirmed COVID-19 cases in Nepalgunj, Banke, the government in Karnali Province has decided to seal the province temporarily.

A meeting of Karnali Province Disaster Management Council today took a decision towards this effect, saying all the entry points of the province would be sealed for a week effective from today.

“With the decision, all movements through the provincial entry points are now stopped,” said the province-level COVID-19 Prevention and Control High-level Executive Committee Coordinator Dal Rawal, adding that the decision to seal entry points was taken to protect the province from COVID-19.

“The decision was taken upon the recommendation of health experts after 15 virus cases were reported in Nepalgunj yesterday,” he informed.

It is important to note that the government has already brought in thousands of people stranded during the lockdown in the name of rescue.

As per sources, over 10,000 people have entered the province through the Babai entry point of Surkhet ever since the lockdown came into force.

Meanwhile, the government has also decided to deploy doctors’ teams at 27 places across the province to identify possible COVID-19 cases and treat them.

“Doctors’ team from Surkhet’s Karnali Province Hospital and Jumla’s Karnali Institute of Health and Sciences will be deployed. They will be based at the centres of local body centres and main bazaar areas to conduct rapid diagnostic tests of suspected persons and also collect their swab samples if necessary,” said Rawal.

Karnali faces shortage of testing kits. The PCR and RTP- CR machines set up in Karnali Province headquarters Surkhet to test for coronavirus haven’t come into operation for the past two days due to lack of testing kits. “We have received a PCR and an RTPCR machines from the federal and provincial governments, but as there are no kits, no test has been conducted from Saturday,” said laboratory chief Om Acharya. “We’ve sought additional kits from Kathmandu, but they haven’t come our way so far,” he added. Ever since the PCR machine was installed, 353 samples have been tested for the virus in Surkhet.

A version of this article appears in e-paper on May 5, 2020 of The Himalayan Times.