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Police have arrested a man on the charge of raping a 12-year-old girl in Morang on Wednesday.

The detainee has been identified as Ram Dev Chaudhary (53) of Bansbari, Sundarhairaincha Municipality-5, Morang, DSP Deepak Shrestha, spokesperson at the District Police Office, Morang, said.

According to a preliminary investigation, Chaudhary raped the girl at around 5:30 pm yesterday.

The Area Police Office, Belbari has started the investigation by keeping him in custody.

The girl has been taken to the Dharan-based BP Koirala Institute of Health Sciences for medical check-up and treatment.

The world's first "human challenge" trial in which volunteers were deliberately exposed to COVID-19 to advance research into the disease was found to be safe in healthy young adults, leaders of the study said on Wednesday.

The data supports the safety of this model and lays the groundwork for future studies to test new vaccines and medicines against COVID-19 using this kind of trial by the end of this year, the team added.

Open Orphan (ORPH.L) is running the project, launched last February, with Imperial College London, Britain's vaccines task force and Orphan's clinical company  hVIVO. 

Scientists have used human challenge trials for decades to learn more about diseases such as malaria, flu, typhoid and cholera, and to develop treatments and vaccines against them.

The Imperial trial exposed 36 healthy male and female volunteers aged 18-29 years to the original SARS-CoV-2 strain of the virus and monitored them in a quarantined setting. They will be followed up for 12 months after discharge.

No serious adverse events occurred, and the human challenge study model was shown to be safe and well tolerated in healthy young adults, the company said.

"People in this age group are believed to be major drivers of the pandemic and these studies, which are representative of mild infection, allow detailed investigation of the factors responsible for infection and pandemic spread," said Chris Chiu, chief investigator on the trial and professor of infectious diseases at Imperial.

The Imperial researchers said they now planned to start a similar study using the Delta variant, and will share their framework around the globe to allow similar research.

That could provide a crucial route to testing new vaccines, antivirals and diagnostics against COVID-19 more quickly, particularly if transmission rates fall in the real world.

Imperial said it could start tests like this using human challenge trials by the end of 2022.

In April, Oxford University launched another human challenge trial which sought to reinfect people to deepen understanding about immunity.

CLINICAL INSIGHTS

The results of the Imperial study, published on a pre-print server and yet to be peer reviewed, also provide some clinical insights that could inform public health policies.

Researchers found that symptoms start to develop on average about two days after contact with the virus, Imperial said, which is earlier than the widely held view that the virus has an incubation period of around five days.

The infection first appears in the throat; infectious virus peaks about five days into infection, which is also when the most significant symptoms are usually noticed, the researchers said. At that stage, the virus is significantly more abundant in the nose than the throat.

They also found that rapid lateral flow tests were a reliable indicator of whether infectious virus was present and therefore the person was likely to be able to transmit the virus. Most people had live virus in their nose for an average of 6.5 days, they said.

Eighteen volunteers became infected, 16 of whom went on to develop mild-to-moderate cold-like symptoms, including a stuffy or runny nose, sneezing, and a sore throat, Imperial said.

Some experienced headaches, muscle/joint aches, tiredness and fever. None developed serious symptoms.

Thirteen infected volunteers temporarily lost their sense of smell, but this returned within 90 days in all but three participants – the remainder continue to show improvement after three months.

There were no changes seen in their lungs, or any serious adverse events. Only one person had any lingering symptoms by six months - a slightly reduced sense of smell which was improving.

The trial used the lowest dose necessary to infect people, although the team said it was comparable to real-world infections.

The scientists will now study other elements from the trial, including investigating why the 16 of the 34 participants in the final analysis did not get infected despite exposure. Some had detectable virus in their nose but did not go on to test positive twice on PCR tests, the threshold the team used for confirmed infection.

Nepal logged 3, 637 new Covid-19 cases and 12 deaths on Wednesday.

According to the Ministry of Health and Population, 6,499 swab samples were tested in the RT-PCR method, of which 2,205 returned positive. Likewise, 5,083 people underwent antigen tests, of which 1,432 tested positive.

The Ministry said that 7,555 infected people recovered from the disease in the last 24 hours.

As of today, there are 69,291 active cases in the country. 

Bijaya Rai Bantawa has been learning Lungkhim, his native language, these days.

The Language Commission is running a 45-day class at his village of Kerabari in Suryodaya Municipality, Ilam, to preserve the dying language that belongs to the local Lungkhim Rai tribe.

Bijaya, 56, gets up early in the morning, finishes household works, and heads to the class, which takes place from 8 to 10 am.

“Being a Lungkhim Rai, I was interested in learning my mother tongue. Hopefully I will be able to say a thing or two in it after completing the language course,” says Bijaya.

According to Janga Bahadur Rai, chairman of Lungkhim Rai Society, 30 people, including women, youths and elderly, are attending the class. He says Lungkhim language fell into near obscurity as their elders stopped using it.

“I come from the Lungkhim tribe and I know Bantawa Rai language. But I don’t speak my mother tongue,” says Janga Bahadur, who is also attending the class.

Durgaman Rai, local Lungkhim community leader, says it is unfortunate that their native language has reached a point of near extinction. “We had forgotten how to speak our tongue. So here we are learning the Lungkhim words used in everyday conversation,” he says. 

Thirty-two year old Ganga Bahadur Rai feels grateful to the Language Commission for organizing the class. He feels his native language is not dying after all. “Our elders didn’t speak the language. We are learning now,” says Ganga Bahadur.

He hopes to teach the language to young members of the community.

The role of the language instructor is being assumed by Arun Rai, a 58-year-old retired police officer. He says parents and siblings used to speak Lungkhim in their household, unlike other families in the community.

“I spoke the language from my childhood. My father and two siblings can also speak Lungkhim but since they don’t know how to read and write, the Language Commission picked me as the language instructor,” he says.

Besides Lungkhim tribe members, people from other Rai tribes like Sampang and Newahang are also attending the class.

“Some people from the neighboring Rong Rural Municipality are also learning. They plan to conduct a similar class in their area,” says Arun.

He expects at least 40 percent of his students to be able to speak Lungkhim tongue by the end of the class.

The current class is composed of 30 days of writing and 15 days of speaking lessons. The lesson-plan was designed by linguist Dr Taramani Rai with the assistance of the class instructor, Arun.

“The essential aspects of language learning are listening, speaking, reading and writing. In this course, however, our focus is more on listening and reading since this class is aimed at those who can already read and write Nepali,” says Dr Taramani.

Janga Bahadur, the chairman of Lungkhim Rai Society, is pleased with the progress.

“The use of our language was limited to only five families and it was only being used during tribal rituals.  The class has at least helped people reconnect with the language spoken by their ancestors,” he says. “Those who didn’t know a single word of Lungkhim are able to formulate simple sentences because of the class.”

Encouraged by the interest shown by young people, the Lungkhim Rai Society plans to spread the language to every Lungkhim household of Ilam.

Dr Taramani says raising the number of speakers is the most effective way of reviving an endangered language.

“When we conducted a survey on Lungkhim speakers some five years ago, we found only one family in Ilam spoke the language. So we decided to start this language revival process from Ilam itself,” he says.

The Lungkhim Rai Society estimates that there are around 100 Lungkhim Rai households in Suryodaya Municipality of Ilam.

“Some more families from the tribe could be scattered in other parts of the district. According to our estimates, the population of Lungkhim Rais in the country could be upward of 10,000, ” says Janga Bahadur.