Review Nepal
Kathmandu, Nepal, June 9, 2020: Though the infectious rate for the coronavirus (COVID-19) has been rapidly spreading across the country, the government does not seem serious yet to be prepared to tackle the global pandemic with reliable test and treatment facilities.
Hundreds of thousand rupees have already spent on the name of controlling the COVID-19. But the government has failed not only to distribute relief to the victims but also to track, testing and treating the infected ones with proper kits and medication facilities.
The government seems full of negligent in terms of testing of the infected persons triggering a fear that the Nepal would turn into an epicenter of the deadly virus. Several incidents have already indicated that the Rapid Diagnostic Test (RDT) has failed to scrutinize the infection of the COVID-19.
Not only the World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended not using RDT kits to test the COVID-19 but several incidents in Nepal have already indicated the ineffectiveness of the RDT. However, the government has been continuing with the RDT raising questions marks over its own integrity, motive and intention.
The RDT tests have been showing positive to the negative and vice versa. For the instances, death of an India returnee migrant worker at Surkhet district would be taken as an example as he had died from Covid-19 on Thursday just a day after he returned home after he registered negative on RDT kits. However, he had tested positive in PCR test conducted after death on Thursday.
Likewise, three persons of a family at Bajhang district were tested positive for the COVID 19 on RDT. But PCR test conducted three days later showed that the family was in fact not infected with the virus.
The astonishing fact is here that the government has procured about 5,000,000 RDT kits notwithstanding the universal agreement on the ineffectiveness of RDT tests.
As the, Federal government has pushed the management of all quarantine facilities to the rural municipality level, the excess on the PCR test seems to have curtailed to test the suspected ones of the virus.
There are over 170,000 people in quarantine centers set up in the local level. The number would drastically increase as government has just begun to return the migrant workers from different countries.
