Did the Health Ministry Recommend Closure Of Schools in 14 Districts? No, Viral Video Is Clipped

Claim
The Health Ministry has recommended shutting down schools in 14 districts.
Fact
Viral news clip is from April 2021.

A video claiming that the Health Ministry has requested for shutting down schools in 14 districts including Kathmandu is going viral on TikTok.

TikTok user @kushalchhetry823 posted a video in which the news anchor says, “The Ministry of Health has appealed to shut down schools in 14 districts including the capital Kathmandu. The Ministry has concluded that Kaki, Rupandehi, Chitwan, Banke, Parsa, Bhaktapur, Kailali, Morang, Dang, Surkhet Bara, and Baglung districts have become hotspots.”

Text superimposed on the video reads, “The government has decided to shut down schools in 14 districts from tomorrow. Good news for the students. The government has decided to shut down schools until Nepali month of Magh 15 [January 29, 2026].”

The video posted on December 27 has garnered 22.9k likes, 2957 users have shared it and 225 users have commented until the last count. The archived version of the TikTok video can be seen here.

Newschecker found the claim to be misleading.  

Fact Check /Verification

To check the authenticity of the video, Newschecker closely observed the video and noticed the logo of News24 Television on the top-left corner of the screen.  

We then ran a key-phrase search on YouTube by take clues from the wordings of the news clip that led us to a video, dated April 15, 2021, posted on the YouTube channel of News24 Nepal television. On checking the video, we found that the news clip from 0:3-second to 0:20-second exactly matched the viral clip, indicating that an old news clip from April 2021 was being shared as recent. 

We checked the entire News24 Nepal report and found that it was reporting about the government request to shut down schools in vulnerable 14 districts amid growing cases of coronavirus in April 2021 while private schools were reluctant to shut down schools.

Further, we found several news articles (See here) regarding the Health Ministry’s request for shutting down schools in 14 districts considered highly vulnerable to Covid-19.

We also checked a news article, dated April 15, 2021, published on Kathmandu Post online which reported about the Ministry of Health’s recommendation to shut down schools and early closure of restaurants in 14 districts.

Thus, our findings clearly indicated that the viral video is from 2021 and shared out of context in a misleading manner.

Conclusion

No, the Ministry of Health has not appealed for shutting down schools in 14 districts. The viral video is actually from 2021 when the country was witnessing a surge in coronavirus cases and schools were reluctant to shut down classes, and is shared out of context.

Result: Missing Context

Sources
News24 TV/YouTube, April 15, 2021
Kathmandu Post, April 15, 2021
Dinesh Khabar, April 15, 2021