[At the center of this crisis in the hinterland is the state of Uttar Pradesh — home to 230 million people, more than the population of Brazil. It is also one of the poorest and least-developed states. In April, local elections were held in villages across the state, which officials say led to the surge in rural areas. According to a teachers’ organization, more than 700 government teachers who were assigned to poll duty died after the elections, many after testing positive for the coronavirus. At the start of the month, the state was recording just over 2,500 cases. By the end of the month, as the elections wrapped up, cases surged to nearly 35,000.]
By Niha Masih
Vipin Kumar, a farmer in his 40s,
was one of them. Last week, a feverish Kumar lay in pain on a cot in the
courtyard of his family’s modest home, which abuts a maize field.
On the fifth day, his breathing
became labored, and the family was advised by a local doctor to rush him to a
big city 25 miles away — a formidable task the family could not manage,
according to his son, Devendra. That evening, on May 10, his body
began to shake violently and he died soon after.
More than 20 people with coronavirus symptoms have died in the village over the
past two weeks, according to locals, a significant increase over the three or
four deaths per month the village saw before the pandemic. Most of them, like
Kumar, were never tested.
“Not a day goes by when there are
no deaths,” said Hariom Raghav, a farmer and businessman who had just returned
from a cremation. “If things continue like this, the village will empty out
soon.”
The story of Banail has been
playing out in villages across India as the virus continues its deadly surge:
Rural areas, where over 65 percent of India’s 1.3 billion people live, had been
spared in the first wave of the pandemic but are now facing devastating numbers
of infections. Three quarters of all districts in India are reporting a positivity
rate of more than 10 percent, a health official said Tuesday, an
indication of how widely the virus had spread.
With more than 23 million reported
cases, India is the global epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic. The country
is recording more than 4,000 deaths a day, which experts say is an undercount.
This week the World Health Organization classified the variant first found in
India as a variant of “concern” and said initial studies suggested it spreads
more easily.
Health-care infrastructure in
villages — deficient at best or missing altogether before the pandemic — is
ill-equipped to service the current needs. India’s rural health-care
system has far fewer specialist doctors than needed. Low levels of
awareness among villagers about coronavirus prevention and a slow
rollout of vaccines has added to worries.
[Their
parents were dying of covid. For 12 frantic days, two sisters tried to save
them.]
At the center of this crisis in the
hinterland is the state of Uttar Pradesh — home to 230 million people, more
than the population of Brazil. It is also one of the poorest and
least-developed states. In April, local elections were held in villages across
the state, which officials say led to the surge in rural areas. According to a
teachers’ organization, more than 700
government teachers who were assigned to poll duty died after the
elections, many after testing positive for the coronavirus. At the start of the
month, the state was recording just over 2,500 cases. By the end of the month,
as the elections wrapped up, cases surged to nearly 35,000.
This week, dozens
of bodies suspected to be coronavirus patients have been found
floating in India’s holy Ganges river in areas of Uttar Pradesh and its
adjoining state, raising fears that corpses are being cast into the river
because crematoriums are overwhelmed.
Activist and farmer leader Yogendra
Yadav wrote that “sheer political callousness” has made the state the epicenter
of “one
of the worst” disasters in 21st century India. Recently, legislators
from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party wrote to the state chief minister
to raise an alarm over the situation in rural areas.
In Banail, the village seeing a
spurt of deaths, the primary health center is a rundown pink building with
broken windows and a motorbike parked in one of the treatment rooms. The doctor
had been away for more than a month — first for a government training program,
and then in quarantine after working in a covid hospital in the district. A
pharmacist on duty said he told villagers to call covid helpline numbers for
assistance.
“The government has made no
arrangements. They have left us at the mercy of God,” said Rakesh Sisodiya, a
villager. “Where should people go?”
Manpal Singh, a local doctor, said
nearly 10 people turn up at his clinic every day with flu-like symptoms. He
advises those who complain of breathlessness to get tested.
On a recent afternoon, a government
team arrived in the village to conduct screening and testing. Outside a temple
guesthouse, under the shade of a neem tree, the team checked the temperature
and oxygen level of the villagers who gathered. The team had brought 25 rapid
antigen test kits for a village with more than 10,000 people.
About three miles away in a nearby
town is a larger government health center. Just before 2 p.m., Hemendra Kumar,
the solo technician conducting tests, had run out of kits and began to turn
people away. He said the district authorities send 100 to 120 rapid antigen
kits and 50 RT-PCR kits each day that are used quickly. RT-PCR results can take
up to five days because they are sent to a city hospital 40 miles away.
At district headquarters in
Bulandshahr, Ravindra Kumar, a high-ranking official, said he works late into
the night these days. “You have visited one village out of 951,” he said. “We
are sending teams in villages for screening, testing and with medicine kits.
The situation is completely under control.”
Unlike earlier, he said, a majority
of the cases in the past weeks have been reported from rural areas.
[Coronavirus
has crushed India’s health system. Patients are on their own.]
In Ghazipur district, at the other
end of the state, the situation is just as grim. In the village of
Sauram, the village head recently wrote to officials about 17 covid-like deaths
in the past two weeks, prompting them to organize screening camps. Most died at
home without ever making it to a health-care facility. The closest center is 12
miles from the village; for advanced care, villagers must travel 60 miles to
the city of Varanasi. G.C. Maurya, a local health official, denied these were
deaths from the coronavirus.
The neighboring state of Bihar is
also hard-hit. In Siwan, Vishnu Shankar Tiwari, a 34-year-old worker at an eye
clinic, spent three days trying to find a hospital bed with access to oxygen
for his mother, whose saturation levels were dropping quickly. She
died on the way to a hospital.
“In the last two weeks at least 12
people I knew have died,” Tiwari said. “Most of them died without even reaching
a hospital, like my mother.”
Amjad Khan, a doctor in the area,
runs a covid WhatsApp group offering consultation to people across the state
that he said helped him keep tabs on the situation in far-flung places.
“It is impossible to know the real
magnitude of covid-related deaths in rural Bihar,” Khan said. “Most of the
people don’t even know that it was [covid] that killed their loved ones.”
For the family of Kumar, the farmer
from Banail village, the shock of his death was compounded by the ordeal that
followed. Villagers were unwilling to help carry the body to the cremation
ground, as is the norm. Ultimately, Kumar’s sons, including a 12-year-old,
picked up the cot on which he died and carried it the two miles to the
cremation site.
“He would have been alive if there
had been medical facilities here,” said Bimla Devi, Kumar’s sister breaking
into tears. “This was not his age to die.”
Utpal Pathak in Varanasi and Shams
Irfan in Srinagar contributed reporting.