Mobile monarch calms Bhutan's COVID fears

Wearing a baseball cap and knee-length traditional Gho robe, and carrying a backpack, Bhutan's king has walked through jungles infested with leeches and snakes, trekked mountains and quarantined several times in a hotel in the nation's capital.

For 14 months, King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, has been travelling by foot, car and horse to remote hamlets to oversee measures to protect his tiny kingdom of 700,000 from the coronavirus outbreak that has flared in neighbouring India.

The impact of the 41-year-old king's excursions are evident in a COVID-19 death toll of just one for the nation nestled between India and China in the Eastern Himalayas.

"When the king travels for miles and knocks ... to alert people about the pandemic, then his humble words are respected and taken very seriously," Lotay Tshering, the country's prime minister, told Reuters.

Tshering, a practising urologist, often accompanies the Oxford-educated king for trips near the porous border shared with India, where a second wave of the pandemic has more than doubled the death toll over the last two months.

Bhutan became a constitutional monarchy in 2008 when the king relinquished his absolute powers. But loyalty to the royal family still dominates the nation's socio-political landscape.

In recent weeks, the king walked for five days on a trail passing through elevations of up to 4343m to thank health workers in remote areas.

"Our king's biggest fear is that if the pandemic spreads like a forest fire then our (nation) could be wiped out," a senior palace official said.

A father of two boys, after every trip the king checks into a hotel in capital Thimphu to follow quarantine protocols.

Like most of his subjects, he has received one vaccination dose.

"(The king) has been to all high-risk border areas time and again to monitor every measure put in place and to ensure best practices are followed within limited resources," Rui Paulo de Jesus, the World Health Organization representative in Bhutan, said.

Bhutan, an ancient kingdom sealed off to foreigners until the 1970s, has just one doctor available for every 2000 people.

The borders of the scenic nation are now shut again and domestic lockdowns have been imposed in some areas, while screening and testing for COVID-19 have been stepped up.

Prime Minister Tshering has said Bhutan is looking to mix-and-match vaccine doses because after inoculating 90 per cent of its eligible population with their first dose of the AstraZeneca shot, the nation ran out of supplies.

The deadline to administer the second dose after a gap of 12 weeks is this month, and the government is seeking other supplies to deal with the shortage.