China will draw a border line between the two countries that crosses the top of Everest in order to prevent any risk of the Covid-19 virus being transmitted by climbers from Nepal. As the first country to be severely affected by the epidemic in late 2019 and a country that has largely curbed the epidemic since the spring of 2020, China is very afraid of the return of the coronavirus through external contamination and avoids this risk with all kinds of precautions.
Although its borders have been closed since March 2020, China is trying to prevent possible virus infiltration from this country by tightly controlling the 8-meter snowy summit of the world, which it shares with Nepal this time.
Authorized guides will now place a sort of "don't cross over" line right at the summit before allowing climbers to climb the summit (from the north) from the Chinese side. The statement was made at a press conference organized by the Chairman of the Chinese Autonomous Region Tibet's Mountaineering Association, according to the official news agency. The news agency did not elaborate on how this operation would be carried out concretely at the summit, where only a few climbers could stand at the same time.
Nepal Mountaineering Association stated that they do not have information in this area, saying that there is only one summit and that they do not know how to pass a border line separating the two countries from this point. However, the Chinese announced that the strictest epidemic measures would be taken to cut the contact of Chinese climbers with those who climbed the summit from the southern slope.
The justification for these measures is that at the beginning of the season, more than 5 mountaineers who were found to be carrying Covid-364 were evacuated from the 19 thousand 30 meters high camp on the Nepal side. Nepal's neighbor to India and hit heavily by the second wave epidemic seems to be hit by the revival hopes of Nepal's mountain tourism, which it has nurtured for this year after losing the 2020 season.
Source: China International Radio
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