Kathmandu, May 21 -- The deadly COVID-19 surge that has engulfedneighbouring India appears to be spilling over into Nepal.Daily deaths have been exploding. The experience from India shows that fragile health systems can get overwhelmed quickly leading to needless suffering:citizens' pleas for oxygen, lack of ICU beds and medicines.

Tackling this threat requires Nepal to adopt a three-pronged approach immediately:

There are rigorous evidence-based strategies to implement such a response, as Nepal's other South Asian neighbours are doing.

On mask-wearing, researchers at Yale University and Stanford University, together with the non-profits Innovations for Poverty Action and GreenVoice ran a large-scale (350,000 adults) randomised control...