COVID-19 cases increasing again, open border blamed

The number of COVID-19 cases, which has been increasing steadily for the past two weeks, crossed the mark of 1000 on Tuesday with 1,090 new cases on a single day.

The two districts of the Kathmandu Valley— Kathmandu and Lalitpur have already been listed in the red zone with more than 500 active cases, the cases are constantly rising in other districts as well. As usual, many Nepalis returning home from India are found infected with the infection, and the open border is blamed for the spike in cases. When the monitoring and screening of the people at the border are weak, many COVID-19 patients are easily reaching the cities and villages and causing the spread of the infections.

With the rise in the number of cases, health experts have asked all to get vaccinated against COVID-19 as more than 75 per cent of deaths of COVID-19 were reported among unvaccinated people in Nepal.

“We request all to receive a vaccine against COVID-19, as per the need, including first dose, second dose or the booster shots,” said the Ministry of Health the other day.

So far, 7,369,108 people or around 33 per cent of the total population have received booster shots. Similarly, a total of 21,772,038 people of the total population were vaccinated with a single shot, and 20,640,381 were vaccinated with both doses of vaccine against COVID-19 so far. The MoHP confirmed two deaths on Tuesday.

Among 6,300 tests conducted in the last 24 hours, 560 cases were detected through 2,958 RT-PCR tests and 530 cases through 3,342 antigen tests. Among the new cases, 397 cases were reported in the Kathmandu Valley on Tuesday.

Among the infected people, many are young in the age group of 21-40 years. On Tuesday, active cases increased to 5,806 with 213 patients in institutional isolation, 61 receiving treatments in ICU at various health facilities and seven in ventilator support. Similarly, 5,593 COVID-19 infected people are in home isolation as of Tuesday.