Covid reaches a new high: The First Case of COVID-19 at Everest Base Camp
Hopes for an Everest season unaffected by the pandemic dimmed last week when the first member of an expedition at Base Camp tested positive for COVID-19, according to a source at camp who asked to remain anonymous.
The infected patient was originally thought to be suffering from high-altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE) and was evacuated by helicopter to a hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal. Upon arrival, the person tested positive for COVID-19. The rest of their expedition team then began quarantining at Base Camp.
While only a single case of COVID-19 has been identified here so far, an outbreak would have disastrous consequences. “When you’re sitting at Everest Base Camp at 17,600 feet, your immune system gets compromised because of the lack of oxygen,” Outside Everest correspondent Alan Arnette told us last spring, when the virus cut the season short before it even started. “Even a small cut on your finger doesn’t heal until you get back down to an oxygen-rich environment. I think the risks are really high, and people are taking a gamble if they climb.”
In discussions of various activities and their risk factors, an often under-rated consideration is the associated activities, compliance enforcement, and rescue / treatment complexities, whether of Covid or other conditions. Golf, hunting, sailing, and mountain climbing, in their pure form, may be low-risk. Participants may be nominally young and healthy, though resilience can be compromised by extreme conditions. The associated socialisation (often involving drinking), related risks, and remoteness (varying considerably for this list of activities) can make rescue or recovery difficult and expensive. This incudes responses to both Covid-related incidents and the normal risks of the activities.
But yeah, Covid's climbing Everest.
#covid19 #everest #nepal #hymalaya
https://www.outsideonline.com/2422521/first-case-covid-19-everest-base-camp
