On Sunday night, 42 individuals, who recently returned from India and were awaiting their coronavirus test results, ran away from their quarantine centre in Malpara, Kapilvastu Municipality.

Police, however, tracked all of them down and returned them to the centre on Monday morning, said Chief District Officer Dirgha Narayan Poudel.

This was not an isolated incident. Eleven individuals ran away from their quarantine centre in Rangapur, Yashodhara Municipality, on May 19. An additional 44 had fled in mid-May from two facilities in the municipality. A similar incident took place in Narainapur, Banke, last week.

Following the incidents, calls to allow returnees from abroad, especially India, to self-quarantine in their respective homes are growing across the country as officials fear mismanaged and overcrowded quarantine centres across the country, including the Tarai, could help spread Covid-19 rapidly.

According to reports prepared by Ministry of Health officials mobilised in the provinces, there is a lack of coordination between agencies under the three tiers of governments. Similarly, various agencies are doing the same work, and contact tracing has been taken lightly.

The health workers serving at local levels take orders from the Ministry of Federal Affairs and General Administration, and this has become a major headache for the health ministry. As a result, most quarantine facilities are overcrowded and mismanaged.

After the government imposed the nationwide lockdown to contain the spread of Covid-19 on March 24, local governments prepared an estimate of people who might return from India, and made provisions for quarantine based on the estimate. But more people returned home than expected, and overwhelmed the provisions, said an official at the health ministry, who was deployed in Province-2.

The official said that charities that used to provide food to people in quarantines, stopped providing food after infection cases surfaced. This made it more difficult for local governments with limited resources to provide for people in quarantine, the official said.

"Agencies under the Ministry of Health prepared guidelines and published it on their website," said Dr Prakash Budhathoky, chief of ENT and Oral Health Unit at Curative Service Division under the Department of Health Service, deployed in Province-5.

"But when we came to the field, we found that health workers working at local levels were unaware of the protocol and guidelines."

The other problem quarantine centres are facing is that people are not getting test results on time. As authorities step up sample collection, resource-strapped labs across the country haven’t been able to keep pace, and people have been forced to stay in quarantine awaiting for more than 20 days.

“Many people don’t know whether they have the virus or not for at least a week,” said Kapilvastu Chief District officer Poudel. “The corona-testing lab in Bhairahawa is under a lot of pressure as more samples are being collected every day.”

Following similar reports from all over the country, officials from the Ministry of Health, deployed to the provinces to deal with the epidemic, have told authorities in Kathmandu that unmanaged makeshift quarantine centres, especially in the Tarai, have been turned into coronavirus “breeding centers”.

They have suggested that instead of sending people returning home from abroad to such centres, it is better that they go home, and self-quarantine.

"We have told elected representatives of local levels of the bordering districts—Banke and Kapilvastu Rupandehi and others that staying home is a far better safer option than staying in the quarantine centres,” said Budhathoky.

Budharam Raidas, a local of Mayadevi Rural Municipality also agrees. He said, "Infected people transmit the disease to his/her family members if they are sent home, but if they live with hundreds of others, everyone in the quarantine will get infected."

The official said that the quarantine centres, which are intended to separate people exposed to infection, don’t work if the infection rates are high. "Even infected people British Prime Minister Boris Johnson stayed in home quarantine," said the official, "Our country cannot keep people in quarantine, when thousands of people get infected," the officials added.

Mahendra Prasad Shrestha, director general at the Department of Health Services, concedes that home is a safer place for returnees if quarantines cannot be managed properly, and safety of the people living in them cannot be ensured.

"No, doubt, home is safer than unmanaged quarantines," said Shrestha. "It is true that quarantines are not being managed properly and a lot of people are getting infected there."