It is India’s turn to be ravaged by the pandemic

After raging and causing serious consequences in a big city in India, the Covid-19 epidemic continued to hit the countryside – where there was a shortage of means to fight the epidemic.
In Basi village, a 90-minute drive from the capital New Delhi, about 75% of its 5,400 villagers have contracted Covid-19 and more than 30 people have died in the past three weeks. Basi village has no medical facilities, no doctors or oxygen tanks, according to Bloomberg .

Unlike city people who know how to use social networks, Basi villagers cannot go to Twitter to call for help from strangers. Basi village in Uttar Pradesh state. The state has more than 75% of its people living in rural areas, according to the most recent 2011 census of India. “Most of the people who died in the village were due to not being given oxygen in time,” said Sanjeev Kumar, the newly elected village chief. Mr. Kumar said the seriously ill had to travel four hours to get to the nearest hospital, but many died on the way. Village chief Sanjeev Kumar on May 10 holds portraits of recently deceased Covid-19 patients in Basi village, Uttar Pradesh state. Photo: Bloomberg. What happened in Basi village is a common image of rural India at the moment. Through interviews with representatives from more than 18 towns and villages across India, the scale of the crisis gradually emerged. According to the Indian Ministry of Health, the country has more than 25 million cases of Covid-19 and 274,390 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. But many believe that the scale of the crisis is significantly larger than the official figure, given that many villagers are sick but afraid to leave their homes, and the death toll from Covid-19 is not fully recorded. General image of rural India After the recent Basi village chief election, many election workers contracted coronavirus, including Kumarsain Nain, 59, and his 31-year-old son. When Nain had trouble breathing and had to go to the hospital, his family couldn’t find an ambulance with an oxygen ventilator, according to Praveen Kumar, another son of Nain. “When we got to the hospital, the doctor said my father had passed away. But instead of recording the cause of death as Covid-19, they just recorded cardiac arrest,” Kumar said. “The doctor said there is no need to check if my father is positive for Covid-19 because he is already dead.” Not long after, in another clinic, Kumar’s brother also died at the same time as six other patients. All 7 people were on ventilators at the time before they died. “I suspect that the hospital ran out of oxygen which led to death,” Kumar said. An outdoor cremation ground along the banks of the Yamuna River, a tributary of the Ganges, in Garh village, Uttar Pradesh state on May 4. Photo: Bloomberg. Reply Bloomberg On May 18, Mr. Baijayant Panda, a senior official in the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, defended the government’s response. He pointed out that the electoral body is the one who decides to hold the vote, and that the state governments are responsible for building the oxygen plants. These facilities receive federal funding. “In early January, the general view was that India passed the strongest wave of corona virus infections. Many epidemiologists are voicing criticism right now, in fact the people who said in October 2020 that the worst is over, so there’s no need to put a lot of restrictions,” Panda said. In the state of Bihar, where nearly 90 percent of the population lives in the countryside, residents last week found 70 bodies floating in the Ganges. Because the crematorium is overcrowded, people are concerned that they cannot afford the funeral expenses, so they have to “send” the bodies of their relatives in the Ganges River. To this day, people still find bodies pushed ashore by the current. A similar scenario is seen in the state of Madhya Pradesh, where 72 percent of the population lives in rural areas, according to 2011 figures. “There are no hospital beds or medicines. People just lay there waiting to die. In the city of Ujjain and surrounding areas, in the past two weeks there have been several cases where the whole family has not survived,” said Rajesh Sharma, owner of a travel agency in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh state. “Unprecedented scale of crisis” In the state of Punjab, local authorities called on volunteers to knock on doors for health checks and urged people to get vaccinated. These medical volunteers (ASHA) have to work in difficult conditions to immunize children and provide first aid to the villages. But according to Balbir, an ASHA from Ludhiana district, Punjab, the scale of the crisis is unprecedented. The fields in Basi village were abandoned because many of the labor force fell ill. Photo: Bloomberg. “Many people are scared so they don’t tell anyone about their fever. Despite the outbreak of the disease, they still haven’t given us adequate protective gear: no masks, no gloves or anything,” Balbir said. The state of Uttarakhand, where nearly 70% of the population lives in rural areas, has also suffered a severe blow from Covid-19. The number of infections in Uttarakhand increased 20-fold after welcoming more than 9 million visitors to the Kumbh Mela ceremony on March 31-24. “There is not a single family in Rishikesh, Uttarakhand state without a sick person. Haridwar, in the same state of Uttarakhand, is in a similar situation,” said Navin Mohan, who helps arrange trips to holy towns on the banks of the Ganges. “The pandemic really got out of control. Thousands of people have died and will die in the coming weeks,” Mohan said.