Nepal is a highly unjust and inequitable society. The Coronavirus pandemic and the country's response to it has dramatically demonstrated that again for all to see.
One set of data which has done that is the administration of the COVID-19 vaccines by Province.
Province 2 got shafted...for obvious reasons...as far as I am concerned!
Since the beginning of July, after the lockdown was lifted, cases, mostly, have been on a downward trend and the Government of Nepal has been relaxing the prohibitions one after another. Of late, the prohibitions have been relaxed considerably. Even restaurants, bars, night clubs, movie theaters are now allowed to open. But, according to the Ministry of Health and Population, the third wave is projected to hit the country in October! So, what's going on? Who knows!
If there is ONE hope in the fight against the unprecendented coronavirus pandemic in Nepal it's vaccines. The Government of Nepal has failed utterly and miserably at fighting the pandemic. Sadly though, even that ray of hope for many are turning out to be just that: just a ray of hope. When they couldn't implement an online registration for vaccines, initiated with help from UNDP Nepal and WHO Nepal, what hope is there of them doing anything about vaccination campaign right by the people?! What?! Really?!
Oli-garchy utterly failed the people of Nepal during these unprecendented times of the Coronavirus pandemic. But Oli will rise again...if Nepali people have their way, just as Deuba has now risen...for the fifth time in just 30 years!
The discovery of an intriguing pattern in the changes in the number of active COVID-19 cases in Nepal led to the discovery of unaccounted 5K cases!
If I didn't know any better, based on the fervor with which Nepalis have been celebrating festivals during these times of the coronavirus pandemic, I would have concluded that there was some benefit to reaching heaven sooner than later.
Data in Bhaktapur's case, for example, show how Biska Jatra had contributed to, what I call, COVID-19 Jatra -- a massive spike in COVID-19 cases. No doubt that'll lead to deaths, if it hasn't already.
On April 13, Ministry of Health and Population of Nepal made another projection about COVID-19 cases in the country. If one were to go by their past projections, this should and can be written off too. However, there is at least one confounding factor this time around.
I have been tracking the Coronavirus pandemic in Nepal by keeping tracking of data about and related to it. Based on my analysis of those data, I have come to conclude that the Government of Nepal was really just pretending to fight the pandemic. Sadly, in the last few days, they appear to have given up the fight. They appear to have collapsed.
The Government of Nepal has NOT had a strategy the entire period they have been attempting to tackle the Coronavirus pandemic. Most of what they did was to pretend to be doing something. But for the last three months, they have even abandoned that and, as far as I can tell, have been leaving the population to fight it on their own. In spite of these trying and potentially deadly times of the pandemic, there are few thing you can do.
Over the course of two months, from July 21 to September 26, the number of cases in the country doubled every month. A close study of the change in the proportion and number of cases representing gender and age demographics that were not represented as much in the July cohort shows that we are on Stage 3 of the pandemic. Given that there's little to no measures in place to mitigate the spread of the virus, Stage 4 looks likely.