As many as 59 Covid-19 patients are still housed at the quarantine centre for a lack of isolation wards at Narainapur Rural Municipality-5, in Banke. A total of 68 individuals have tested positive for the coronavirus in Narainapur alone. In Banke, the number has hit 93, the highest in the country.

Narainapur is fast becoming the most active Covid-19 hotspot, with 59 infections diagnosed on Monday alone. There’s widespread fear among health workers that the infection will enter communities.

Bheri Hospital’s chief of medical bureau Rajendra Pandey said infection was already widespread in Narainapur. “The worst is yet to come. The spread has been rampant because of mismanaged quarantine centres,” he said.

Fears among public as well as health workers have further escalated after a 25-year-old man died of Covid-19 at a quarantine facility in Narainapur on Sunday.

The man had recently returned from Maharastra state in India on foot and was stranded at the border for a day before he was placed at the facility set up at Dipendra Secondary in Narainapur on May 12, according to rural municipality officials.

His swabs were collected on Saturday, and by the evening his health condition had started to deteriorate, according to the office of the rural municipality.

He was diagnosed with Covid-19 on Sunday afternoon at Bheri Hospital lab, hours after his death.

According to Prem Buda, in-charge of the quarantine facility, the deceased had suffered from diarrhoea and reported a headache the previous night. He was given Jeevan Jal (rehydration solution), which proved to be of little help.

Locals have decried the authorities failure to mount effective response against the virus. They said the man who died in quarantine would have survived had he been taken to the hospital when he started to show symptoms.

To move the infected from quarantine facilities, Province 5 government has decided to set up an isolation ward at a primary health centre in Narainapur but there’s a lack of manpower and equipment necessary for the isolation ward, provincial offficials say.

Locals have demanded that there should be at least a primary health centre-level facility to treat the infected people.

But there’s a lack of isolation wards in the whole district with the Covid-19 specific Sushil Koirala Prakhar Hospital in Khajura already full with patients. The hospital has a capacity of 26 beds.

The health centre in Narainapur lacks electricity, according to Istiak Ahmed Shah, chief of Narainapur Rural Municipality.

The eight infected on Friday were taken to Beljhundi’s Covid-19 specific hospital in Dang. In Narainapur, 68 people have been diagnosed with the disease so far. The rural municipality has 13 quarantine centres with 718 individuals.

The rural municipality is currently sealed. Banke’s Chief District Officer Kumar Bahadur Khadka said that the local unit has been declared a “high-risk zone”.

“The movement of people is completely restricted in the local unit,” he said.

Assistant Chief District Officer Hari Pyakurel said that the local primary health centre has been designated for the treatment of the coronavirus patients, with private hospitals in Nepalgunj assisting with extra beds.

But on Tuesday afternoon, the 57 infected in Narainapur rejected the district administration’s plan to move them to the isolation wards in Nepalgunj.

Meanwhile, locals in Narainapur have been demanding the authorities to send the quarantined people home, arguing that they have shown no symptoms of the disease.

With the Khajura-based Sushil Koirala Prakhar Hospital full to its capacity and a lack of resources at the local primary health centre, the infected are still housed at the quarantine centres. But a meeting of district administration on Tuesday afternoon decided to move the infected to Lions Dental Hospital in Nepalgunj and to the seminar hall at Kohalpur-based Agriculture Development Bank, which would be turned to an isolation ward.

Pyakurel said that while the ambulances to transport the patients are on standby at the quarantine centres, there is risk that the infected may leave the facilities. “The district administration has therefore deployed police personnel around the area,” he said.