Nepal has seen a more than 1,200% rise in seven-day average of daily new Covid-19 cases since mid-April, CNN's calculation of data from Johns Hopkins University showed.
On Monday, the country posted its record high 7,388 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours according to government statistics. On average, the country is reporting 200 new daily cases per million people.
Nepal's neighbor India, which continues to grapple with a brutal second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, posted a similar rate of average new daily cases per million people at the end of April.
India reported an average of about 206 cases per million residents on April 22, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Nepal’s average per capita infections are around where India’s were less than two weeks ago.
The tiny South Asian nation had seen case numbers begin to fall in February and into March, with newly identified cases hovering between 50 to 100 each day. But infections erupted in mid-April as India's second wave picked up speed — and daily cases are now in the thousands.
Nepal, which has identified cases of the variant first identified in India, has limited health care infrastructure and access to life-saving resources, raising fears it is ill-equipped to deal with a massive outbreak like the one ravaging India.
On Monday, Nepali Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli announced that country will ban all international flights starting at midnight on May 6 to May 14.