A Norwegian climber became the very first ever to be analyzed for COVID-19 at Mount Everest basecamp and has been flown by helicopter to Kathmandu, where he had been hospitalised.

Erlend Ness told The Associated Press at an email Friday he tested positive about April 1-5. He said a second evaluation on Thursday was negative and he was currently staying with a native family in Nepal.

A professional mountain manual, Nordic Lukas Furtenbach, cautioned that the virus may spread one of the countless of different passages, guides and helpers that are actually camped on the bottom of Everest if most of these are perhaps not assessed instantly and security precautions are obtained.

Any epidemic might end the rising season, simply ahead of a window of good weather in May, ” he explained.

“We’d want now most desperately mass testing in basecamp, together with everybody analyzed and every team getting dispersed, no touch between teams,” explained Furtenbach.

“This has to be carried out today, otherwise it’s too late”

Furtenbach, directing a group of 18 climbers to Mount Everest along with its sister summit Mount Lhotse, said that there may possibly be a lot more than only 1 instance on the mountain since the Norwegian had dwelt with various others .

A Nepalese mountaineering official denied that there weren’t any active cases over the hills right now.

Mi Ra Acharya, manager at the Department of Mountaineering, said that she hadn’t any official details regarding the COVID-19 cases and reports of ailments such as disease and elevation sickness.

Mountaineering was shut annually thanks to this pandemic and climbers came back to Everest in 2013 to the very first time since May 20-19.

the most favorite spring climbing season in Nepal, that has among the greatest peaks on the planet, began in March and finishes in May.