Public health emergency act to come into effect with rise in COVID-19 cases

The Public Service Act 2075 BS is coming into effect after COVID-19 cases crossed 2,000 in the country. The cases have reached 2,099 after 288 new cases were identified in a single day today.

The Act comes into effect after number reached as defined in the act. The standard in the act defines it as the level-2 effect of the epidemic after the infected cases reaches 2000 to 5000.

With the continuous increasing number, the Health Ministry is preparing effective strategy to combat it.

Ministry spokesperson, Dr Bikas Devkota shared that the scale of the test would be increased considering the infection rates. With this, the dedicated hospitals should have 80 per cent isolation beds for the treatment of.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared emergency after COVID-19 pandemic crossed level-3.

The Public Health Act-2075 Clause 48 (1) states that there shall be a rapid response team and emergency physicians’ group as prescribes in order to extend health service immediately during emergency circumstances. The federal, provincial and local level shall develop emergency health plan in consonance with the standards and directives determined by the federal government under the federal law.

Similarly, Act’s Clause 48(4) states that the local level may declare a state of public health emergency in accordance with the prevailing law provided if any disaster occurs in more than one local level, the concerned State and if the public health disaster occurs in more than one State, the federal government could declare the state of public health emergency as prescribed.

Currently, there are 26,930 hospitals put together the government and private hospitals. The number of hospitals with ICU facilities stand at 194 while there are only 111 hospitals with Corona Clinic.

Likewise, there are a total of 840 ventilators in the Nepal.

So far 75,343 COVID-19 tests have been conducted through PCR procedure while 116,345 testes have been conducted through RDT procedure. The 193,106-bed quarantine facilities have been set up in all seven states in total. There are 3,793 isolation wards and COVID-19 lab in 21 places.

First reported on December 31, 2019 in Wuhan of China, the deadly infection initially termed ‘Coronavirus’ was first detected in Nepal on January 23, 2020 on a Nepali youth returning from Wuhan.

The WHO declared this outbreak as the Public Health Emergency of International Concern on 30 January, 2020 and pandemic on March 11, 2020.