Nepal government to provide free treatment for COVID-19 patients
The Health Ministry has directed all state-run hospitals to allocate 50% of their beds for Covid-19 patients. It has also instructed the hospitals to provide free treatment to Covid-19 patients, run fever clinics and collect swab samples for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests. The ministry has also asked hospitals not to trouble patients by referring them to other hospitals if they test positive for coronavirus infection. The Health Ministry has also directed private laboratories not to charge more than Rs 2,000 for polymerase chain reaction tests.
To ensure that health workers are not overworked, the ministry has decided to deploy doctors who have completed MD/MCH/MD/MS/MDS on scholarship for first-on-call duty (emergency). The ministry has also directed hospitals to run extended health services and prohibited private practices to those doctors.
The ministry has said that a drastic change has been seen in the age groups of the affected people, with an increasing number of children and young people getting seriously ill and dying because of Covid-19. The Health Ministry on Thursday said it recorded 490 new Covid-19 cases and five deaths in the past 24 hours. Taking the country’s overall infection numbers to 282,054 and fatalities to 3,066. The number of active COVID-19 cases stood at 4,384 as of Thursday.
