Developments of the past one week have raised serious questions about the conduct of the Nepal Communist Party government. They indicate how low the actors close to the government can go to make money during the life-threatening crisis of COVID-19 and to what extent they can fall to hide their mistakes from the public. First, there was the procurement scam of medical logistics. The company to which the government awarded the contract for this job, Omni Group, had no prior experience of supplying medical goods.  The contract was awarded in haste and in highly inflated rates. Some of the medical items brought by the Omni group were as many as 28 times more expensive than normal market prices. When this came out in the media, the government canceled the contract with the Omni Group. When an online newspaper, Kathmanduexpress, published the report about the collusion among relatives and contacts of serving ministers, IT consultant to the Prime Minister’s Office Asgar Ali and PM’s other advisors, that report was deleted by Ali’s nexus without the knowledge of the online newspaper. All this was done, it has been established, by those who are close to the power centers and who are in this game of making money by abusing power, tarnishing the image of the government and the country.

Actually, this should be the time when health authorities are expending all their energies for testing the suspected cases and administer treatment. This is the time for the public health authorities to receive praise from the people because of all the good works they are doing. And the ministry of health and the government should be receiving accolades from all sides. But they have become the subject of harsh public criticism, even anger, because of their own doings. Early this week, the Health Ministry purchased medical logistics from China to test and treat patients of COVID-19. That was the right thing to do. Nepali health facilities have no tools to test the patients suspected of coronavirus and the government had to procure them. But now it has been revealed that almost all the medical items, costing over billion rupees, were purchased at way too high rates, as many as 28 times higher than normal market price for some of the items.

The world is under the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic—affecting each and every aspect of our life. Lockdown and social distancing have become new normal. Needless to say, no one has been immune to the economic and social fallout of this crisis. Yet, the countries are combating it by taking various measures, because of which people from across the world have started seeing light at the end of the tunnel. Hardest hit the Chinese city of Wuhan has gotten back to normal, for example, and many others are expected to follow suit. Amid the global crisis, however, there is also a rising unity among people to help out those who are suffering or who need help. We have been seeing the good number of good Samaritans coming forward to contribute toward the alleviation of pain and chaos emanating from the pandemic, signaling that the humanity in us is still alive. But sadly, and very, unfortunately, acts of stigmatizing people who are tested positive or who are even just suspected of infection have also started to come out.

As the nationwide lockdown enters its second week, people are desperately looking for a reassuring leader at the helm of our government. Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli is recovering from a kidney transplant and Deputy Prime Minister Ishwor Pokharel is technically in charge of the coronavirus response team. However, we have yet to see the type of leadership a crisis demands.

Five days into a complete lockdown to stem the threat of coronavirus pandemic, people across the country have largely obeyed the government’s ruling. In the last five days, Kathmandu Valley has stood still: There have been no vehicles and movement of people, barring sporadic incidents. This is largely because people have realized that Covid-19 can be deadly if preventive measures are not followed. For the country and the government with inadequate medical and human resources to combat this global pandemic, the response of people has been encouraging. If the people disobeyed the lockdown and went with business as usual attitude, the situation could be worse than it is now.

Yet another person has been tested positive of Covid-19 on Wednesday, according to National Public Health Laboratory (NPHL) of Ministry of Health, making the number of total positive cases three out of the total tests of 687.  That Nepal has not had to witness fatality so far is a matter of relief but many think that we have negligible positive cases because Nepali health authorities have not tested the people. To test the people, health facilities must have protective gears and test kits as well, which they do not have.  Worldwide, the number of infection is rising. So is the number of deaths too. In this context, Nepali authorities must do at least two vital things to ensure that the pandemic can be contained.   First, trace.  Health authorities need to trace all persons the infected came into contact with and bring them to medical facilities. They should be tested and even if they are found negative they should be put in quarantine depending on the severity of the case.  For the moment, it is crucial to trace the contacts and whereabouts of all those who were in contact with two persons recently tested positive.  And then, having traced them, health authorities should test all of them. Given the speed in which Covid-19 is spreading, health authorities should test every individual who has the symptoms of flu and fever.

The Covid-19 has now become a reality for Nepal. Until Monday, Nepal had only one positive (and a recovered) case. Now another person, who recently returned from France, has been tested positive and she is undergoing treatment at Sukraraj Tropical and Infectious Disease Hospital, Teku. With this, panic level among people has sharply increased. Perhaps considering the seriousness of the case after this incident, the government on Monday enforced complete lockdown of the country. It is clear that the government had to announce this drastic measure after the appeal to the people to stay home, not to travel and thus take care of themselves went in vain. The curfew-like situation that has started from Tuesday morning has worked considerably well. Streets are empty and vehicles are not seen on the streets.  But this, it seems, is true only in the main streets of the valley. Outside of the Ring Road and in inner streets, people don’t seem to care about the lockdown.

First it was about what prevents people from contracting coronavirus: Take a little bit of alcoholic drinks, eat garlic and turmeric, take some cow urine, even dung.  Then it shifted to what causes the infection: the person who lives and comes from the country affected by the virus.  So there was racial attack on people who looked like Asian, Chinese to be particular, and they were insulted and even blamed to be the carriers of the disease.  In three months since the outbreak of coronavirus, which later took pandemic proportion, and which is ravaging the whole world at the moment, disinformation, misinformation and wrong information about the source of the virus, its infection rate and remedies have become the subject of deep worry for the countries which are struggling to combat the disease as well as the countries which are struggling to prevent its outbreak.  Nepal has not been the exception to this trend.

These are extraordinary times and require extraordinary measures from the government including declaration of a nationwide lockdown. A 19-year-old Nepali woman has tested positive for COVID-19. She traveled to Nepal from France via a Qatar Airways flight on March 17. This case should raise alarm bells for us all. We should urgently take a bold decision to implement a nation-wide lockdown.

By all means, we are living through the most dangerous times in history since the World War II. Countries are being ravaged by the disease, economies are falling apart, people are dying.  Even the countries with supposedly the best health systems—America, Germany, France, UK, for example— are failing to save their citizens. Italy alone lost over 700 people on Sunday. The world is in panic. In Nepal, we do not have resources needed to put things in place.  Despite this, the government has taken some of the measures to keep the country and people safe from the contagion of the pandemic.