Kathmandu, May 8 -- Nepal's second wave is continuing tospread like wildfire across the country,with devastating consequences. Entire families are getting infected and succumbing to the disease, hospitals do not have beds, and have run out of oxygen.

On Saturday, Nepal's daily case load dropped to 8,418, thanks to fewer tests owing to the weekend. The total number of active cases in the country now stands at 83,493. In the past 24 hours, another 53 have died of Covid-19-many of them because caregivers could not get oxygen cylinders.

Access to oxygen now determines who lives and who dies in this deadly second surge of the pandemic in Nepal.

Even major private hospitals in Kathmandu are overwhelmed with the increasing number of seriously...