After causing havoc in urban areas which are reeling under the second coronavirus wave, the virus has now invaded the country’s hinterland where healthcare facilities are almost non-existent, testing centres rare, and Covid-appropriate behaviours are only empty talks.
To make the matter worse, in many villages the authorities have no record of deaths and infections in the absence of testing facilities. This is one of the root causes of the unchecked spread of the virus.
Absence of proper medical facilities in these rural areas —home to 70 per cent of the country’s population — to deal with Covid-19 and unawareness about the gravity of the disease are making the situation worse.
Health experts said that during the Covid first wave last year, rural areas remained more or less unaffected despite migration of labourers because of strict lockdown and villagers following norms. But this time around, home coming by migrants, panchayat elections, Mahakumbh, marriages, religious events and harvest season have made the Covid-19 situation more ugly.
Take the case of rural areas in south Punjab from where 60 per cent Covid cases are being reported from villages.
According to local reports, in the last 20 days, 90 people have died of Covid-19 in Chogath, a village in Bhavnagar district in Gujarat. There is a severe shortage of doctors and medical personnel in the rural areas of Gujarat, as per the report.
Health authorities say around 60 per cent of cases are being reported from villages as there has been a poor response to the vaccination drive. Same is the situation in several villages of Bihar and Jharkhand. As per official figures, in many predominantly rural districts in Bihar, the number of active Covid-19 cases is almost nine to ten times of what it was last year. As of now, Bihar has more than 1 lakh active Covid cases with Patna topping the list with 17,000 active cases.
However, in April, five other largely rural districts with a large rural population registered an increase of more than 4,000 active cases: Gaya (7,703 cases are active), Muzaffarpur (5,406 cases), Saran (4,778 cases), Begusarai (4,675 cases) and Aurangabad (4,364 cases).
Rural areas of Maharashtra’s Amravati district are now reporting higher number of cases than urban areas with authorities claiming that Amravati city on Tuesday registered 249 new Covid-19 cases while the rural areas of Amravati registered 947 fresh cases. In fact, Amravati city has recorded 504 Covid-related fatalities while the rural areas of the district have seen 521 deaths since January this year.
Similarly, in Jharkhand rural areas, from the first outbreak last year till March 31 this year, 1,113 people died of Covid while this April alone, 1,282 more deaths have been recorded.
Raja Bhaiya, convener of the Vidya Dham samiti, an NGO in Banda in Lucknow, talked about Covid situation in Uttar Pradesh. “Death is very quick in the villages. The locals ignore fever and body ache and treat them as seasonal fever which they think will go with a passage of time. Before they can realise it is corona, they die.”
“I cannot quantify as to how many people have died in the Attara block in the last one week but I can tell you there is a beeline in Banda crematorium to cremate the bodies. This was never seen in Banda before,” Raja Bhaiya said adding that in the absence of space in cremation grounds people are cremating people in the fields.
Not only Banda, the reports of death of people are pouring in from the outskirts of Lucknow. Doctors in PHC Chinhat vouch that almost 50 people have died of fever in Juggaur in the last fortnight. In Ruddauli half a dozen villagers died in Pakkaudi village.
Similarly, in Haryana’s Titoli village, 40 people reportedly died due to Covid-19 in ten days. The family members of the deceased are now being tested for the virus even as the villagers have claimed that the actual fatalities are double what the authorities claim.
The Jharkhand Government is now pulling up district administrations, asking them to conduct tests at a rapid pace and save lives while in Bihar authorities have started distributing masks in villages as well as raising awareness to follow Covid-appropriate behaviour. The state government is also trying to create more oxygen beds in district towns.
However, authorities are blaming the villagers too for the spike. Muktsar chief medical officer Dr Ranju Singla in Punjab points out that timely testing can lead to timely treatment. “Villagers have started rushing to hospitals. But in most cases, they come to us when the infection has severely impacted their health,” she said.
