As the coronavirus pandemic is slowing down in developed nations like US, UK and other European countries, Nepal’s is facing insurmountable crisis to manage the pandemic. Its recent crisis is attracting media headlines across the globe including this Nepal’s Covid Crisis Worsens as Workers Pay the Price in The New York Times.

In the Outlook magazine, Brabim Karki writes “the alarming situation of India has been featured in newspapers across the globe but the western media’s concern about Nepal’s deepening crisis wave is limited to the virus reaching Mount Everest, the world’s tallest peak”.

Nepal is in a war zone and it is helpless. The vaccination rate in Nepal is very low, only 7.2 per cent of the population has been vaccinated with the first dose. Nepal urgently needs vaccines and medicines from foreign donors, or else the cataclysm will engulf the country.

Brahim Kari in the Outlook magazine

Karki writes that Nepal situation is worst than in India because of its size, more unprepared and hapless than its neighbor India. “Nepal has fewer resources and capacity. The situation is so devastating that Nepal’s Prime Minister wrote an opinion in one of the newspapers published from London, appealing to the international community for help.”

In The New York Times, Bhadra Sharma and Mujib Mashal has a profile of a Nepali migrant worker in India, carried Covid with him while returning home to Nepal and passed the virus to his family. Because of poor healthcare infrastructure in Nepal and most hospitals running out of supplies, Mr Karki eventually lost his life leaving behind his young family without any financial support.

“Millions of people continue to feel the increasing pressure not just with the direct health impact of Covid-19, but also with food, jobs, medical bills, kids out of school, payback loans, mental pressure, and much more,” reported saying Ayshanie Medagangoda Labe, the resident representative of the United Nations Development Program in Nepal.

• Nepal’s Covid Crisis Worsens as Workers Pay the Price
• In ‘vaccine apartheid,’ Nepal is ground zero. It needs U.S. help
• Nepal’s Covid Crisis Is Not Just About Everest

Vaccine Apartheid

In a Statnews OpEd, Gagan K. Thapa and Duncan Maru write “The world has reached the era of Covid-19 ‘vaccine apartheid‘. That was the warning this week from World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Nepal is now ground zero.”

“Nepal has surpassed India in terms of Covid-19 deaths per capita, and is far ahead of other south Asian countries. About 40% of Covid-19 tests are coming back positive. With fewer than 2,000 ICU beds and 600 ventilators for a population of 30 million, Nepal’s health care system is collapsing.”

According to the Outlook, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has recently announced emergency assistance to help Nepal fight its devastating second wave surge.