RUPANDEHI, May 4: High alert measures have been placed in Province 5 following the confirmation of 17 coronavirus infection cases in just two days. Seventeen people were confirmed to have contracted the virus in the province last Saturday and Sunday. A man from Rupandehi, who had been working at a tailor’s shop in Gandhinagar, India, was said to have transmitted the virus infection to others. He arrived in the province at 1.00 pm on April 7 from his workplace at Gandhinagar. 

He entered Nepali territories unhindered. He was quarantined right after he reached his home. Now he has been kept in isolation in Butwal after he tested positive for the infection, it has been said. His swabs were tested at the National Public Health Laboratory, Teku, Kathmandu. 

A meeting of the security committees of all the districts in the province decided to step up security and alertness measures at the transit points with India following the confirmation of the coronavirus infection, said the Province Police Office spokesperson Nawaraj Pokharel. "The province’s borders with India have been sealed off completely," he said. 

As a result of the detection of many infection cases in two days, local people in the area including Marchawar and Butwal are scared. "We cannot be sure that others cannot enter Nepal easily through the porous borders with India. We at the borders are terrified," said a local Ghanshyam Gupta of Lumbini-10. Another infected woman, 25, of Kothimai in Rupandehi is receiving treatment at the Butwal-based corona hospital. 

Likewise, an all party meeting decided to close Nepalgunj-1 following the confirmation of 16 cases on Saturday and Sunday, said ward chair Pramod Rijal. Mayor of Nepalgunj Sub Metropolitan City, Dr Dhawal Shamsher Rana and ward chair of Nepalgunj-9 Bishnu Bahadur Lama asked the local people to take caution and stay home. 

Of the 90 persons tested for the virus at Bheri Hospital Nepalgunj on Saturday, 15 were confirmed to have contracted the virus. The tests were conducted after a 60-year-old man tested positive for the virus on Friday. The infected were in contact with the man. The infected man had been staying at a mosque in the area.  Swabs of four suspected people were collected on Sunday and the results are awaited. Fifteen infected people on Sunday have been admitted to the corona hospital, Khajura.

 
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