The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the global health and economic system simultaneously. It has exposed the poor health infrastructure at global, national and local levels. The novel coronavirus first broke out in Wuhan of China and then swiftly travelled to the Global North with Italy, Spain, the UK and the USA becoming the hotspots of the virus flare-up. These nations have robust health systems compared to those countries in the Global South but the coronavirus brought their health care systems to their knees. But what is more worrying is that the people in the Global South are now experiencing extreme impact of the pandemic. Already facing enormous challenges, their health systems have been underfunded and understaffed. The governments in poor South have been unable to allocate adequate resources to build basic infrastructures and recruit sufficient number of doctors, nurses and other health workers.

The defective political and economic policies are also blamed for the rickety health system that is cracking under the strain in the wake of the coronavirus crisis. The extractive policies of neoliberalisation and privatisation policy led to the collapse of public institutions which are supposed to support the ordinary beings, especially in the sphere of health, education and employment. The chronic political instability coupled with the dysfunctional state mechanisms hampered the creation of robust health and education system in favour of the poor and marginalised sections of society in Nepal. Given the capacity of the state as well as scale and impact of coronavirus, the incumbent government has punched above its weight. It has increased the preparations to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. In the initial days when the virus started to appear, the country had only one laboratory but now it has set up 32 laboratories to conduct the COVID-19 test with the private hospitals running separate six labs for the purpose.

In an interview to this daily, Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Ishwor Pokhrel has said that Nepal stands on a better footing in terms of measures taken to control the COVID-19. It has developed its capacity to test 18,500 samples a day and the private labs can test more than 3,500 samples daily. It has 2,600 ICU beds and 900 ventilators across the country. Around 250 COVID-19 dedicated ICU beds have been added, with 240 ICU beds in the offing. There are 36 dedicated COVID-19 hub hospitals and 115 clinics. In order to intensify the contact tracing, the government has formed and deployed 1,075 teams throughout the country, informed the DPM. It had already begun plasma therapy to treat critical patients, which can be crucial to save the critical patients.

In order to address the economic side of the virus-affected persons, the government has prepared expenditure standards for the COVID-19 treatment. As per this, the coronavirus patients staying in home isolation will get Rs. 200 and those in isolation centre are provided Rs. 2,000 as daily allowance. The patients with medium virus symptoms undergoing treatment in hospital will get Rs. 3,500, those with medium critical case Rs. 7,000 and those who need ICU treatments Rs. 15,000 a day. This fiscal support to the coronavirus patients is very positive which indicates the government’s commitment to the social security system as envisaged in the constitution.