Associated Press
KATHMANDU, Nepal A coronavirus outbreak on Mount Everest has infected at least 100 climbers and support staff, an expert mountaineering guide said, giving the first comprehensive estimate amid official Nepalese denials that the disease has spread to the world’s highest peak.
Lukas Furtenbach of Austria, who last week became the only prominent outfitter to halt his Everest expedition due to virus fears, said Saturday one of his foreign guides and six Nepali Sherpa guides have tested positive.
“I think with all the confirmed cases we know now confirmed from (rescue) pilots, from insurance, from doctors, from expedition leaders I have the positive tests so we can prove this,” Furtenbach told The Associated Press in Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu.
Last year Nepal did very well at locking down the country, and not allowing any expeditions or trekkers to come into the country, and they actually shut off the Khumbu Valley, which is the gateway to Mount Everest, and it s very inaccessible . so it was a good place to actually stop people getting in there, and stop Covid getting in there, Cotter says. [But] local Nepalese operators were really hurting through not being able to operate, so they enabled domestic tourism to start up initially. That took the first Covid into the Khumbu Valley. Then they enabled some foreigners to go in, and some people went and ran some expeditions, and it didn t appear that there was a big outbreak afterwards, and that gave them confidence to open for this spring, pre-monsoon season, 2021.
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Multiple patients have tested positive for Covid-19 after arriving from the Everest base camp.
Photo: AFP
Base camp officials said they had received reports of 17 confirmed cases from hospitals in the capital Kathmandu, where a number of climbers have been sent from the base camp and higher camps to be treated.
And staff at a private hospital in Kathmandu, the CIWEC clinic, confirmed to the BBC that patients had tested positive for coronavirus after arriving from Everest base camp.
The Nepalese government has so far denied having any knowledge of positive cases at Everest base camp, raising concerns that officials are downplaying the extent of the situation out of fear it will bring more pressure to close the mountain to expeditions.