Uddhav Prasad Kharel, mayor of Budhanilkantha Municipality, thinks the steps taken in the recent days to contain the spread of coronavirus are disproportionate to the threat it presents.

The municipality, which recently allowed schools within its jurisdiction to reopen, said that all business and services shut down to contain the spread of the virus in its area will soon be allowed to run like in normal times in the days to come.

“Weddings are taking place, people are organising feasts where hundreds are gathering in one place,” said Kharel. “People are behaving as if the pandemic is over. I too think that this virus is nothing. Our response was disproportionate to the risk.”

Like Kharel, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli has also been downplaying the risk posed by the virus. Defying science, Oli had said that the infection can be cured by drinking turmeric water and sneezing. One of his Cabinet ministers even proposed that the country be declared free of coronavirus. Others concluded that the Nepali people have natural immunity against the virus.

But public health experts have been warning that although authorities have given up efforts to contain the spread of coronavirus, which has already killed at least 1,663 people throughout the country and infected over 245,650, the virus hasn’t gone away.

“The risk of contracting the virus has not declined. But people’s fear for the virus has declined,” Radhika Thpaliya, a risk communication expert, told the Post. “People might have become used to it and are not taking the risk seriously, which is not a good sign,” she said, adding, “People with co-morbidities and senior citizens will be at great risk of dying if we underestimate the risks.”

Data from the Ministry of Health and Population shows that over 60 percent of people who have died due to Covid-19 in Nepal are over age 60 years of age. Officials at the ministry say that over 80 percent of the deceased had co-morbidities.

With the government halting free testing and contact tracing of asymptomatic patients, the number of new cases discovered and reported has declined dramatically.

On Thursday, 1,217 people tested positive for the virus throughout the country, including 404 in the Kathmandu Valley. The figures are being looked at with scepticism as 5008 people—the highest ever— had tested positive for Covid-19 on October 10 when 19,320 tests were performed throughout the country, and changes have not been observed in people’s behaviour.

Doctors have never said that the level of risk has declined. The Ministry of Health and Population has been urging people to follow safety measures since the beginning. Health experts. however, said that the purpose of communication does not get fulfilled just by urging the people to do something through one-way communication.

“One-way communication does not help induce behaviour change,” said Thapaliya.“We never tried to understand how the messages were perceived by the public. We failed to engage the people, analyse social trends and contents of social and traditional media. The public also wants its queries to be addressed.”

Instead of making people aware, people in power are downplaying the risk by saying that asymptomatic people need not undergo tests and also ask people to go to the hospital only in case of emergencies.

Instead of following the science and listening to advice from public health experts, authorities took some ad-hoc decisions— enforcing odd-even rules for vehicles. Shops were allowed to open every alternate day, which only increased crowding, experts say.

“Controlling the spread of infection is not on the priority of this government,” Dr Mingmar Gyelgen Sherpa, former director-general at the Department of Health Services, told the Post. “Instead of working seriously to save the people from getting infected, the government is working to divert the public's attention. If the government was serious, it would send doctors to existing health facilities instead of laying the foundation stone to around 400 health facilities.”

The Ministry of Health and Population recently laid the foundation stone to 396 new health facilities and seven infectious disease hospitals across the country.

Doctors say only sending a message for the sake of it does not work. People are all aware about the government’s message, but the message has not helped change behaviour.

According to risk communication expert Thapaliya, for a message to yield expected results three factors—predisposing factors, enabling factors and reinforcing factors— are important. Predisposing factors provide reasons to accept an advice, enabling factors facilitate the implementation of such advice into action and reinforcing factors include reward or punishment for complying with or violating the rules.

“We neither succeed in convincing the people about the risks nor did we facilitate them to implement the advice or enforce measures to make people obey the advice,” Dr Baburam Marasini, former director at the Epidemiology and Disease control Division, told the Post.

“Governments in other countries ask people to take the virus seriously, But in our country, officials say the virus is nothing.”

According to Marasini, authorities could use different techniques to make the message effective. Popular actors, popular figures of the society, leaders and civil society members could have been used to convey messages, he said. But that didn’t happen when communicating the risks associated with Covid-19.