By A Staff Reporter
Kathmandu, July 31: The government on Friday was advised to begin preparations to enforce smart restriction based on fact and evidence to contain the possible outbreak of the third wave of COVID-19 in the country.
A meeting of the Directive Committee of the COVID-19 Crisis Management Centre (CCMC) held under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba at Singha Durbar this evening was suggested to enforce smart lockdown based on the actual cases of the virus in specific area, district and region.
A proposal to impose the smart lockdown was tabled by the Ministry of Health and Population in the meeting, Joint Secretary and Spokesperson for the CCMC office Noor Hari Khatiwada told The Rising Nepal after the meeting.
Khatiwada said next Cabinet meeting would take a specific decision on the proposal. According to him, as per the smart lockdown proposal, the nature of the smart lockdown can be categorised into red, amber, yellow and green zones based on indicators such as the infection rate, mortality rate, number of infections, and condition and availability of hospital infrastructure.
The concerned District Crisis Management Centre (DCCMC) can enforce the order as per their convenience and necessity based on the categorisation, Khatiwada said.
“The concept of the smart lockdown has been introduced, and discussions on it have begun from today,” said Khatiwada. Future meetings will decide further on this and prepare specific plans and programmes before the surge of third wave, he said.
Prime Minister Deuba, who is also the chairman of CCMC, has directed to implement and issue the QR code technology on the vaccine verification cards for the migrant workers.
As some countries do not recognise paper authentication, Prime Minister Deuba has asked to implement the QR code, and in this regard, the CCMC and the Ministry of Health and Population have already begun internal preparations, Khatiwada said. “We will implement this system from this week,” he added.
At present, the workers going abroad receive paper vaccination certification cards from four hospitals including Teku.
Similarly, Prime Minster Deuba also instructed the officials to quickly finish the task of establishing eight holding centres in the southern border and make the centres well-organised by filtering the infected and non-infected people right from the holding centres.