Lockdown+5
Nepal clamped its first Covid lockdown on 24 March 2020, and five years later many have forgotten what it was likeIt was only five years ago that neologisms like ‘self-quarantine’, ‘comorbidity’, ‘contact tracing’, ‘omicron’ entered the Nepali lexicon.
PCR, CCMC, PPE, WFH and other acronyms were thrown about, and we became intimate with vaccine names: AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna, Sinovac. We ‘social distanced’ or ‘sheltered-in-place’ as we tried to ‘flatten the curve’.
After the second Covid-19 case was identified in a female Nepali student returning from Paris, the country went into lockdown on 24 March 2020. A day later, India followed suit, halting the movement of over 1.3 billion people.
Tens of millions of migrant workers walked hundreds of kilometers, including Nepalis. Many died along the way.
Social ostracisation and stigmatisation based on rumours fanned by social media was rife. Nepali workers who made it to the border were quarantined. Some jumped into the raging Mahakali River to get to their families and drowned.
Two million Nepali migrant workers in the Gulf and Malaysia were stranded, as there were not enough flights to repatriate them. Nepalis abroad sent money home as people lost their jobs, others collected money to ship ventilators, masks and personal protective equipment (PPE) to Nepal.
“Covid might be over but we are still unprepared for rescue and repatriation on that scale, considering that many Nepali workers are in conflict zones of the Middle East,” warns Upasana Khadka of the non-profit Migration Lab. “The pandemic also highlighted the need for migrant reintegration, transnational mechanisms to claim wages of returnees, but most importantly it brought home the role of low-paying, unskilled migrant workers in propping up Nepal’s economy.”
Read also: Poor cash-rich Nepal, Sonia Awale
The lockdown was initially announced for a week, but lasted four months till mid-July 2020. Within a month Nepal went back into lockdown again for four weeks before it was eased, and there was another two-month lockdown in April 2021. The time that should have been used for a mass vaccination was squandered in shutting people in their homes. This newspaper stopped its print edition for a year.
Without lockdowns many more elderly Nepalis and those with pre-existing ailments would have died. During the deadly Delta second wave, even children became sick. But the prolonged lockdowns hit the poorest and neediest Nepalis hardest.
Research scientist Sameer Dixit at the Center for Molecular Dynamics Nepal remembers getting into an argument with security personnel as he bicycled in the morning during lockdown.
“They would ask me to mask up but I would tell them it wasn’t required because the air was so clean for the first time,” he recalls.
Indeed, the air was so clean that people could see the snowy mountains from the Tarai and Mt Everest was visible from Chobhar. The lockdown offered proof that Kathmandu’s notorious air pollution could indeed be cleaned up by reducing emissions.
“In many ways, we had actually forgotten about the need for cleaner, better air, Covid served as a reminder,” says urban planner Bhushan Tuladhar. “In fact, air pollution made Covid cases worse. But as soon as the pandemic ended, we were back to breathing dirty air. Last week Kathmandu ranked among the most polluted cities in the world.”
A 2019 study put air pollution fatalities at 41,000 per year in Nepal, several times more than total reported Covid deaths, 11,959. Better air quality would increase the life span of Nepalis by nearly five years.
Unfortunately, there is no vaccine to combat air pollution. And with the anti-vaxxers in the Trump administration, there are already cuts in critical vaccine research to fight the next pandemic. This coincides with a bird flu outbreak and measles deaths in the United States.
“The single biggest lesson of the pandemic was the importance of vaccines,” says Dixit, adding that the US withdrawal from WHO will lead to serious gaps in preparing for the next pandemic.
Read also: Still learning lessons from COVID, Sonia Awale
Buddha Basnyat of the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit (OUCRU) says US pullout from global health is a huge setback that could compromise disease surveillance and diagnosis: “The pace at which the Covid vaccines were developed was nothing short of a miracle, but we are vulnerable to both emerging and pre-existing diseases.”
US withdrawal has left the field wide open for China and India to now lead the way. According to AidData headquartered in Virginia, China provided over $4.6 billion in Covid-19 aid from 2020 to 2022, surpassing the United States and Germany which contributed $4.05 billion and $3.64 billion respectively.
China donated more than 239 million doses of Covid vaccines to its Asian neighbours. India supplied 301 million vaccine vials to 99 countries and two UN entities, 15 million doses as donation to more than 50 nations including Nepal. The US donated nearly three times more, but that may not happen next time.
Read also: Why is there vaccine hesitancy in Nepal? Sonia Awale
“With America backing out, China and to a lesser degree India, will fill that role, and it is not necessarily a bad thing for us. As neighbours we are closer to them and it would be advantageous to us,” says Sher Bahadur Pun, virologist at the infectious diseases hospital in Teku. He adds: “But capacitating our health sector to manufacture vaccines at home would be the best way to prepare for future pandemics and health emergencies.”
writer
Sonia Awale is the Editor of Nepali Times where she also serves as the health, science and environment correspondent. She has extensively covered the climate crisis, disaster preparedness, development and public health -- looking at their political and economic interlinkages. Sonia is a graduate of public health, and has a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Hong Kong.