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Jajarkot has been experiencing continuous snowfall since Thursday evening, bringing life to a standstill.

Kushe Rural Municipality, Barekot Rural Municipality and JuniJand Rural Municipality among others places of the district have been witnessing the snowfall.

Kushe Rural Municipality, Panchkatiya, Samayela, Barekote, Ramidanda, Rokayagaun and Nayakwada among other places have witnessed heavy snowfall.

The places received up to three feet of snow.  Local Khagendra Bohara of Barekot Rural Municipality said that the village witnessed heavy snowfall this time.

“Though the snowfall has affected normal life, it is good from the environmental point of view.

The hills and the settlements have been blanketed with snow.

Rivers and water sources have turned into ice due to the extreme cold.

Children and elderly people have been affected in particular due to the snowfall and rainfall.

The hills surrounding Khalanga, district headquarters of Jajarkot, have also been blanketed with the snow.

Locals have thronged Panchkatiya near Khalanga to play with the snow.

Human traffickers have started searching for new routes after the government banned the Nepalis from going to Malaysia and Gulf countries on visit visa.

Claiming that the police officials deployed at the Tribhuvan International Airport, airlines staffers and high-ranking officials of the Department of Immigration have been helping in human trafficking, the Ministry of Home Affairs banned the people from going to Malaysia and Gulf countries on visit visa.

The government has decided to tighten the visit visa so as to break the chain of human traffickers and to save the people from getting into trouble after landing in the destination countries.

It has been found that the human traffickers have started using the routes of India after the Nepal government banned the people from going to Malaysia and Gulf countries on visit visa.

Some manpower agencies have been sending people to Malaysia and Gulf countries on visit visas in collusion with the high-ranking officials of the Department of Immigration by charging a huge amount.

The Department of Immigration on Thursday sent two women back home who were going to Dubai via India on a visit visa by changing the routes.

The Department of Immigration at the Tribhuvan International Airport had refused to grant permission to Sange Dolma Lama and Phul Maya Tamang of Sindhupalchok who were going to India.

The main reason was that the Immigration officials found the visa of Dubai in their passports.

During the interrogation, the duo had said that they were going to India. But they could give a specific reason about going to India.

An official at the Department of Immigration said that the manpower agencies have been sending people to Malaysia and Gulf countries via Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India after the government banned the people from going to the Gulf countries on visit visa from the Tribhuvan International Airport.

A woman, who was going to Dubai via Pakistan, was also sent back home a week ago.

The BA.2 sub-variant of Omicron has been found in five African countries, a World Health Organization scientist said on Thursday, adding she was concerned about the development because samples of BA.2 may not be spotted as a form of Omicron, Reuters reported.

The BA.2 sub-variant has begun to replace Omicron’s more common “original” BA.1 variant in countries such as Denmark. Data from there suggests no difference in disease severity, according to another WHO official.

“BA.2 … has been reported in five countries, that is Botswana, Kenya, Malawi, Senegal as well as South Africa,” Dr Nicksy Gumede-Moeletsi told an online media briefing.

“We are very concerned,” she said, adding that BA.2 was proving hard to identify because it was not always picked up by the S-Gene Target Failure criterion, which is used to distinguish the original Omicron from other variants.

Gumede-Moeletsi said the WHO was working very closely with laboratories, asking them to forward samples that had come back without being flagged as Omicron for further analysis, in order to gain a more precise picture of the spread of BA.2.

The BA.1 version of Omicron has been somewhat easier to track than prior variants. That is because BA.1 is missing one of three target genes used in a common PCR test. Cases showing this pattern were assumed by default to be caused by BA.1.

BA.2, sometimes known as a “stealth” sub-variant, does not have the same missing target gene as the original Omicron variant.

Instead, scientists are monitoring it the same way they have prior variants, including Delta, by tracking the number of virus genomes submitted to public databases such as GISAID.

As with other variants, an infection with BA.2 can be detected by coronavirus home tests kits, though they cannot indicate which variant is responsible, experts said.

Nepal logged 3, 175 new Covid-19 cases and 14 deaths on Thursday. 

With this, the country's active caseload mounted to 1,095,063. Similarly, the death toll has climbed to 11,778. 

According to the Ministry of Health and Population, 10,026 swab samples were tested in the RT-PCR method, of which 2,742 returned positive. Likewise, 2, 579 people underwent antigen tests, of which 422 tested positive.

The Ministry said that 8,723 infected people recovered from the disease in the last 24 hours.

As of today, there are 63,296 active cases in the country. 

The Ministry said that 887,443 infected people have recovered from the disease so far.

The Ministry said that 61,862 people are staying in home isolation while 1, 434 are in institutionalized isolation.

Meanwhile, the Kathmandu Valley reported 1,509 new cases today.

According to the Ministry, 1,249 cases are reported in Kathmandu, 183 in Lalitpur and 77 in Bhaktapur.