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A 38-year-old SARS-COV-2 positive man with mild symptoms was isolating at home.After several days, he became short of breath with pulse oximetry dropping to 88% on room air.With friends and families frantically calling all nearby hospitals for hours, a hospital bed was finally found.Upon admission, he received supplemental oxygen along with the available medicines.Two days after his admission the hospital ran out of medical oxygen.It was up to the family to find medical oxygen.Even after a full day's search for oxygen by all friends and family, not a single cylinder was found.A day later, gasping, he took his last breath.This is a common occurrence in Nepal during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.Only two months prior, Nepal had reported zero deathson 10 th March 2021, there were 337 new cases diagnosed. 1Nepalese believed they were now moving towards the end of the pandemic.But, the scientific omens were suggesting otherwise.Across the border in India, a sharp rise in new cases was reported and deaths were soaring. 2 Politicians on either side of the border were breaking the very regulations they had implemented to curb the spread of the virus, as they organised rallies and attended public events.By 14 th May 2021, there were 8520 new cases and 203 new deaths. 1epal has a notorious history of incompetency during times of crises.During the Earthquake in 2015, that cost the lives of more than 8000 people, the government of Nepal was widely criticized for being unable to even manage the aid that came in.The government had frenzied, unable to tend to the people in a particular location.And the COVID-19 pandemic, a calamitous infectious wrath that engrossed the whole nation only showed, again, how ill equipped the country was.Nepal, a low-income country with highly constrained health resources, faces a scarcity of medical supplies including hospital beds, ventilators, oxygen, essential medicines, personal protective equipment, test kits, and vaccines against COVID-19.There is also a scarcity of trained medical professionals.As of 18 th May 2021, 1.86% of the eligible population have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. 3The health system has been unable to cope with the increasing number of patients and is at imminent risk of collapse.
Adhikari et al. (Thu,) studied this question.