Nepal seeks int'l support to fight against Covid

According to the Health Ministry, Nepal's healthcare system is under intense pressure and immediate steps were needed t be taken.

Speaking to CNN on Saturday, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli said that he has urged the UN and other international bodies to help support Nepal's fight against the Covid pandemic.

"We are trying our best to protect the lives of the people, and have taken some steps so the situation is under control," Oli told CNN while seeking vaccine, oxygen, critical care medicines and other life saving drugs from the international community.

In a report, CNN said that the Covid situation in Nepal is increasingly resembling the ongoing crisis in India, with skyrocketing infections, overwhelmed hospitals and pleas for help.

Nepal has sought support from India, China, the US, European nations and others.

On Friday, Nepal reported a record 9,196 cases and 50 deaths from the virus.

The country has so far reported 377,603 confirmed Covid-19 cases and 3,579 deaths.

Media reports suggested that some hospitals in Nepal are running out of oxygen supplies, health infrastructure on edge due to chronic surge of the case and people are struggling to get bed, ventilators, medicine and among other critical care facilities.

Some hospitals have started informing that they were running out of oxygen facilities and stopped taking new Covid patients.

India has just resumed oxygen supplies to Nepal, while China is giving 2,000 oxygen cylinders and other medical facilities to the Himalayan country.

After the Serum Institute of India failed to provide the desired and required numbers of Covid vaccines to Nepal, officials in Kathmandu are looking at getting the jabs from China and Russia.

The country is now reporting about 20 daily Covid-19 cases per 100,000 people -- about the same rate that India was reporting two weeks ago.

"What is happening in India right now is a horrifying preview of Nepal's future if we cannot contain this latest Covid surge that is claiming more lives by the minute," Nepal's Red Cross chairperson, Netra Prasad Timsina, said in a statement.

Nepal has fewer doctors per capita than India, and a lower vaccination rate than its neighbour.

Mass public events, including festivals, political gatherings and weddings, have allowed infections to spread, along with general public complacency and slow government action.