The state government is heading to face full blown community spread in the remotest villages where people are suffocating to death without getting any medical attention in time, reports MUDIT MATHUR
The devastating second surge of new variant of Covid-19 washed away the success stories demonstrated to claim the Uttar Pradesh to be the best governed state in managing the pandemic crisis. The government is heading to face full blown community spread in the remotest villages where people are suffocating to death without getting any medical attention in time. Reports of countless deaths with informed symptoms of Covid-19 are coming every day from the villages, even recoveries of their floating bodies in nearby rivers may further aggravate the situation. Post Covid complications too are also responsible for increasing numbers of continuing deaths. The system virtually collapsed because it could not cope with the deluge.
Social media is flooded with requests for oxygen cylinders, Remdesivir and Tozilzumab injections and ICU and ventilator beds by panic stricken ordinary folks urgently trying to keep their loved ones alive. The black-marketers had exploited needy persons providing the such injections, oxygen cylinders and oxygen concentrators at excessive prices and police nabbed many of them but such efforts were just look like window dressing as source suppliers remained out of the clutches due to poor tracking strategy.
The families of many Covid-19 infected people blamed poor testing facilities that conductedin a controlled manner and delayed test reports to conceal the exact swelling figures of positive patients. Even private labs were prohibited to conduct RT-PCR tests thereby increasing avoidable overloading of samples in public labs.So, situation deteriorated due to undue delays in getting RT-PCR reports to confirm positive cases of Covid-19 and by the time report came to hand infection grew beyond controllable parameters, taking tolls of affected people.
In Gahmar village of district Ghazipur the people witnessed horrific inhuman scenes on both the piers holy river Ganga flooded with hundreds of decomposed dead bodies floating on the water surface. The village is considered as biggest village in Asia in terms of its population which is just situated about 90 kilometres away from the VIP constituency of prime minister Narendra Modi’s in Varanasi.“It appears that these corpses are being dumped directly in river by some hospitals with the help of administration. And if this is not true then it indicates toward some bigger criminal conspiracy,” suspectedthe eyewitness while talking to “TEHELKA.”
“This is not a normal situation and various doubts are boggling the Hindu minds about last rituals performed, especially in north India. In Hindu mythology funeral is done either in water flow or cremation. In both situations naked dead bodies are draped in white shroud ‘Kafan’ instead of full cloths. Surprisingly these carcasses were floating with daily normal wears like T-shirts and paints or ladies’ suit or sari,” observed local resident Shivendra Pratap Singh, a Research Scholar of Veer Kunwar Singh University, Bihar, who wrote many articles exposing apathy of the local administration just hushing up such incidents. “Stray dogs, pigs and animals and vultures are gathered on the site snatching dead bodies and poking their beaks into the decomposed flush. Local SDM hurriedly arranged fast decantation of these unclaimed bodies with the help of Sevrai tahsil’s officers, Police and local public,” he added.
Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra severely criticised the government over Covid deaths demanding inquiry under the supervision of High Court judge as the government is busy in image making exercise and pain of the people become unbearable. “The government is understating the correct figures of death many times in the cities like Lucknow, Gorakhpur, Jhansi and Kanpur. The dead bodies are floating in the rivers at Ghazipur and Ballia and hundreds of such bodies along the riverside in Unnao district,” she tweeted.
Priyanka relied on a comparative chart published in daily Bhaskar showing the numbers of officially declared figures of Covid deaths viz a viz records of crematorium showing five times more deaths in Kanpur, Lucknow saw around 1500 dead bodies, Jhansi is not recording all the deaths and Gorakhpur account for 15 times more that official figures. Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav reacted on his Twitter handle about the issue of floating dead bodies in holy waters of Ganga river. “The bodies found floating in the Ganges are not a statistic, they’re someone’s father, mother, brother and sister.” “What has transpired shakes you to your core. There has to be accountability from the very government that has failed its people so badly,” he remarked.
The callous approach of the local administration further exposed when without taking any pains for identification of the recovered corpuses, they just burry them in most undignified manner without following the religious rituals in violation of the judicial pronouncements of apex court and various state high courts. Traditions and cultural aspects are inherent to the last rites of a person’s dead body. Right to a decent funeral can also be traced in Articles21 and 25 of the Constitution of India. In the matter of Hatras gangrape victim’s case, the Lucknow Bench of Allahabad High Court depreciated such practice of the state government’s decision to go for midnight cremation of victim’s body in utter violation of Hindu rituals on the ground of maintaining law and order.
“Apart from this, havoc of Corona is spreading in the Gahmar and nearby villages. Information revealed that between 30th April to 2nd May, about 50 cremations had already performed on the different piers of Ganga in and around Gahmar village. There is no arrangement of Covid testing or sanitation and pleasedon’t ask about medical facilities of proper vaccination. There is only one primary health centre without any modern medical facilities and only one doctor is posted in such a big village to take care of people including about 24,000 registered voters. Possibilities are there that a large number of populations is infected with Covid. The continuity of deaths may goup due to poor health services and lack of resources,” Shivendra added.
“People aren’t dying from Covid. They are dying because they are not getting hospital beds, oxygen cylinders, blood plasma and medicines on time. Our govt’s ill-preparedness has failed them.What was not reported was the number of people who died in their homes, in ambulances, in front of hospitals for want of a hospital bed, for lack of oxygen, for lack of medicines or vital injections,” said Dr Vinti Agarwal, who petitioned on social media to convert Schools and Banquet halls to temporary hospitals to save human lives which invoked the support of more than 28,000 netizens.
“I am the sole caregiver of my parents aged 77 and 84. They have been unwell and staying indoors for the past 2 weeks. I am scared that if they contract Covid 19 infection, they won’t get an ambulance, an ICU bed or even oxygen in time. Many have died at home and outside hospitals,” she lamented.
Aligarh emerged as the worst hotspot where 19 professors died in last fortnight contracting lethal Covid infection. “This hit hard Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) which lost close to 50 members in the current wave, including serving and retired faculty members, teachers in its school, and non-teaching staff members,” said its spokesperson Rahat Abrar. The AMU Vice-Chancellor Tariq Mansoor said the microbiology laboratory at Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College here is sending samples to the Institute of Genomic and Integrated Biology laboratory, New Delhi, for the genome sequencing of variants detected in the town. He expressed the possibility of some “new strain” of the coronavirus that could be driving the spate of deaths. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanth visited Aligarh to take stock of ground reality and assured boosting oxygen supply and vaccination drive in the AMU campus.
Hapless government awaken so late with the reality of shortages of adequate hospital beds, medicines, oxygen supplies and respiratory support mechanism with the rush of patients gathered in hospitals with low oxygen level gasping for a breath resulting in total chaotic situation. The ambulance services gone out of gear due to sudden flow of serious cases. The sleepless nights hearing siren sound of the ambulance running round the clock on deserted roads made negative impact on the psyche of the people in general.
The centralised approach of chief minister Yogi Adityanath administration came to severe criticism by many Union Ministers, Members of Parliament, state legislatures, opposition leaders and public in general for its failure at the ground level for dealing such a pandemic situation. The state law minister Brijesh Pathak, expressing his resentment over the medical support systems, wrote a letter to Additional chief secretary medical health and medical education exposing the ground realities that public of state’s capital was facing to have proper treatmentat the hospitals. He lamented the death of noted historian and Padamshri awardee Dr Yogesh Praveen whose life could not be saved despite his request to CMO the ambulance came to him after delay of five precious hours.
Union Minister of State for Labour and Employment Santosh Gangwar lost his patience and reported grim reality in a letter to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath. He complained about delays in admission of Covid patients in hospitals, black marketing of medical equipment such as ventilators, and key health officials in his Lok Sabha constituency Bareilly, not responding to phone calls. “Multipara monitor, bi-pap machines and ventilator were being black marketed and sold at 1.5 times their prices. I request you to fix the rates of these equipment on behalf of the government and that MSME registered private hospitals should be given a discount,” the letter said.
The Union minister also suggested Covid patients should be referred and admitted to L-3 hospitals in the “least possible time”. “I have been informed that despite having a referral letter, when a patient goes to a government hospital, he is asked to get another referral from the district hospital. “The patient has to run from one place to another while his oxygen levels are endlessly falling. This is a perturbing issue,” letter added.
The situation of Bareilly is reportedly very bad as one of BJP MLA Kehar Singh died and administration could not provide him ventilator at relevant time. He was shifted to Max super-speciality but could not be saved. “Every day at least 30 bodies are being cremated in Bareilly. There is acute shortage of space for the last rites. Scarcity of wood is also reported to cremate bodies. Five journalists including editor of Hindi daily Divya Prakash Prashant Suman, Ashish Agrawal and one SDM died after contracting Covid infection,” told veteran journalist Nirbhay Saxena.
“In April 246 people were declared died due to Covid but actual numbers could be much higher in reality as we have no account of deaths in the villages and in Covid isolation,” he added.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s constituency Raebareli largely comprises rural areas that have been rocked by the second Covid wave. One of its village, Sultanpur Khera, reported death of 18 people with Covid symptoms over the last one month. The local administration declared the village as containment zone isolating it with barriers. Locals living in panic as the villagers never saw tragedy of this magnitude. None of the politician came to wipe their tears.
BJP MLA Lokendra Pratap Singh also wrote a letter to chief minister informing him about rise of Covid infection every part of the Lakhimpur Kheeri where social workers, teachers, journalists, government employees, advocates are dying. “None of the village is spared from its clutches. We are haplessly seeing our people dying due to lack of oxygen supply,” the letter explained. He demanded 10 oxygen concentrators.
The entire state is in the grip of rising pandemic including state’s capital Lucknow and major cities like Gorakhpur, Varanasi, Kanpur Nagar, Hardoi, Jhansi, Moradabad, Meerut, Gautam Buddh Nagar (Noida), Bulandshahr, Muzaffarnagar witnessed a spike in infection in recent weeks recorded as most active cases district. The State, which is officially confessing 350-400 deaths on daily basis, has lost more than 30 journalists in the pandemic, including important faces of mainstream media.
At the review meeting with his Team-9, CM Yogi Adityanath directed officials to get a detailed report on ‘black fungus’-Mucormycosis disease affecting Covid patients during recovery. It affects the sinuses, the brain and the lungs and can be life-threatening in diabetic or severely immune-compromised Covid patients. State received information about 62 such cases where patients are facing risk of life as post Covid complications.
The CM asked officials to come up with a list of precautions, line of treatment and preparations against the disease after consulting with medical experts. Yogi Adityanath has started moving in different parts of state to take first hand report now by the time Corona crisis blown to almost at its peak narrating stories of unprepared infrastructure collapsed to serve the people in need.
On the other hand, a division bench of Allahabad High Court pointed flaws in status report submitted before it and sought further clarity from the government with regard to its stand on various issues relating to Covid-19 management. The High Court recently ordered the Uttar Pradesh government to form a three-member Pandemic Public Grievance Committee in every district of the State to redress grievances of people with regard to COVID-19 issues.
COVID-19 MAY SPREAD THROUGH WATER
It appears to be an international game-plan to expose the hapless poor Indians to the ‘severe acute respiratory syndrome Corana Virus’ (SARS COV2), a manmade virus reportedly leaked from the research facilities of Wuhan during the last quarter of 2019. However, the Union Health Ministry and its proxies like ICMR are not ready to accept that the deadly virus can spread through water too. Earlier, they had stated that it does not spread through air.
The Corona Virus was finally identified in December 2019, but the then ICMR officials known for their close ties with the Chinese and WHO assured that it does not spread through air. The researchers, however, were in unison that the virus has been found to range between 50 nm to 140 nm, and the health officials were asked to advice that wearing N95 mask could prevent its spread.
The Union Health ministry scientists are repeating the mistake of 2020, when they that the Corona Virus does not spread in water. On that basis, there are hundreds of the Covid-19 victims are either being buried near river fronts or deposited in the river steams.On this issue, the recent research of the Tokyo Institute of Technology has found that the virus may easily adjust within water molecules. It was revalidated by four Indian scientists, Rajiv Kumar, Bhupender S. Chhikara, Kiran Gulia and Mitrabasu Chhillar, who found that the adsorbed water molecules having well-ordered structures induce the rearrangement of hydrogen bonding with low activation energy. It means next time the virus may spread even through irrigation water and the drinking water supply systems.
The ICMR instead of accepting its ‘inadequacies ‘ or revising its policy on COVID-19, which many believe ‘that it is “deliberating exposing” Indian masses to the deadly virus. It may not be surprising that these scientists announce yet another ‘Indian strain of Covid-19’, maybe to please their Chinese peers or WHO contacts.
