The jumbled up signs for seven provinces at Kathmandu airport is symbolic of the shambles things in Nepal are in. Nearly half-a-year of lockdown later, there are still 150,000 Nepali workers overseas waiting to return. Some of those who came back from India have now started going back because they could not find jobs.

Although limited scheduled flights have started, returning Nepalis still have to inexplicably wait for up to 7 hours at holding centres even if they have PCR negative reports. Hygiene precautions at the airport are rudimentary.

After three weeks of restrictions, citizens are back to business as usual.

As public pressure builds up, the government on Wednesday loosened up on some of the restrictions even though Kathmandu Valley is still recording a surge in cases. On Thursday there were new 572 coronavirus cases in the Valley, out of 1,246 for the rest of the country. Five more fatalities were recorded nationwide, three of them in Kathmandu Valley.

https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/muddling-through/