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COVID-19 Containment Efforts of a Low-Resource Nation: The First Four Months in Nepal

A novel coronavirus (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 or SARS-CoV-2) was identified in hospitalized patients in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. It rapidly spread across the globe within the span of a few months. Nepal is a low-resource country with limited critical care delivery infra...

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Autores principales: Basnet, Sangita, Koirala, Sameena, Pandey, Basu, Koirala, Janak
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Cureus 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7398707/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32765991
http://dx.doi.org/10.7759/cureus.8946
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author Basnet, Sangita
Koirala, Sameena
Pandey, Basu
Koirala, Janak
author_facet Basnet, Sangita
Koirala, Sameena
Pandey, Basu
Koirala, Janak
author_sort Basnet, Sangita
collection PubMed
description A novel coronavirus (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 or SARS-CoV-2) was identified in hospitalized patients in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. It rapidly spread across the globe within the span of a few months. Nepal is a low-resource country with limited critical care delivery infrastructure. Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19), the disease caused by the virus, could potentially cause a medical catastrophe in Nepal. We reviewed all pertinent documents published in the public domain by the Ministry of Health and Population of Nepal and other relevant literature. We aimed to describe the key strategies Nepal embraced in the first four months in its attempt to curtail the disease immediately following the identification of its first case and the challenges it faced. In our review, we determined that the key steps taken by Nepal included border control to prevent the importation of cases, strict quarantine in facilities for anyone entering the country, early case detection, and isolation of all infected cases irrespective of symptoms. Testing capabilities, quarantine facilities, and isolation beds were also rapidly increased. We discuss how Nepal achieved some success in the first four months between January 13, 2020, when the first case was identified, to May 13, 2020. However, it faced several challenges that ultimately led to an exponential rise in cases thereafter.
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spelling pubmed-73987072020-08-05 COVID-19 Containment Efforts of a Low-Resource Nation: The First Four Months in Nepal Basnet, Sangita Koirala, Sameena Pandey, Basu Koirala, Janak Cureus Preventive Medicine A novel coronavirus (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 or SARS-CoV-2) was identified in hospitalized patients in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. It rapidly spread across the globe within the span of a few months. Nepal is a low-resource country with limited critical care delivery infrastructure. Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19), the disease caused by the virus, could potentially cause a medical catastrophe in Nepal. We reviewed all pertinent documents published in the public domain by the Ministry of Health and Population of Nepal and other relevant literature. We aimed to describe the key strategies Nepal embraced in the first four months in its attempt to curtail the disease immediately following the identification of its first case and the challenges it faced. In our review, we determined that the key steps taken by Nepal included border control to prevent the importation of cases, strict quarantine in facilities for anyone entering the country, early case detection, and isolation of all infected cases irrespective of symptoms. Testing capabilities, quarantine facilities, and isolation beds were also rapidly increased. We discuss how Nepal achieved some success in the first four months between January 13, 2020, when the first case was identified, to May 13, 2020. However, it faced several challenges that ultimately led to an exponential rise in cases thereafter. Cureus 2020-07-01 /pmc/articles/PMC7398707/ /pubmed/32765991 http://dx.doi.org/10.7759/cureus.8946 Text en Copyright © 2020, Basnet et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Preventive Medicine
Basnet, Sangita
Koirala, Sameena
Pandey, Basu
Koirala, Janak
COVID-19 Containment Efforts of a Low-Resource Nation: The First Four Months in Nepal
title COVID-19 Containment Efforts of a Low-Resource Nation: The First Four Months in Nepal
title_full COVID-19 Containment Efforts of a Low-Resource Nation: The First Four Months in Nepal
title_fullStr COVID-19 Containment Efforts of a Low-Resource Nation: The First Four Months in Nepal
title_full_unstemmed COVID-19 Containment Efforts of a Low-Resource Nation: The First Four Months in Nepal
title_short COVID-19 Containment Efforts of a Low-Resource Nation: The First Four Months in Nepal
title_sort covid-19 containment efforts of a low-resource nation: the first four months in nepal
topic Preventive Medicine
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7398707/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32765991
http://dx.doi.org/10.7759/cureus.8946
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