Scores of bodies found floating in Ganges River
Grisly sign of COVID-19’S grip on country
• Scores of bodies are washing up on the banks of the Ganges as Indians fail to keep pace with the deaths and cremations of around 4,000 people a day from the novel coronavirus.
India currently accounts for one in three of the reported deaths from coronavirus around the world, according to a Reuters tally, and its health system is overwhelmed, despite donations of oxygen cylinders and other medical equipment from around the world.
Rural parts of India not only have more rudimentary health care, but are now also running short of wood for traditional Hindu cremations.
Authorities said on Tuesday they were investigating the discovery of scores of bodies found floating down the Ganges in two separate states.
“As of now it is very difficult for us to say where these dead bodies have come from,” said M.P. Singh, the top government official in Ghazipur district, in Uttar Pradesh.
Akhand Pratap, a local resident, said that “people are immersing bodies in the holy Ganges River instead of cremation because of shortage of cremation wood.”
Even in the capital, New Delhi, many COVID victims are abandoned by their relatives after cremation, leaving volunteers to wash the ashes, pray over them, and then take them to scatter into the river in the holy city of Haridwar, 180 kilometres away.
“Our organization collects these remains from all the crematoriums and performs the last rituals in Haridwar so that they can achieve salvation,” said Ashish Kashyap, a volunteer from the charity Shri Deodhan Sewa Samiti.
The seven-day average of daily infections hit a record 390,995 on Tuesday, with 3,876 deaths, according to the health ministry.
Official COVID-19 deaths, which experts say are almost certainly under-reported, stand at just under a quarter of a million.
The World Health Organization said on Monday that it regarded the coronavirus variant first identified in India last year as a variant of global concern, with some preliminary studies showing that it spreads more easily.
Late that day, 11 people died in the government SVR Ruia hospital in the southern city of Tirupati because a tanker carrying oxygen arrived late.
“There were issues with oxygen pressure due to low availability. It all happened within a span of five minutes,” said M. Harinarayan, the district’s senior civil servant.
Vaccines are also running short, especially in Maharashtra state around the financial
centre of Mumbai, and in the capital, Delhi, two of India’s hardest-hit regions.
“We are ready to buy doses, but they are not available right now,” Maharashtra health minister Rajesh Tope told reporters.
India’s second wave of the pandemic has increased calls for a nationwide lockdown and prompted more and more states to impose tougher restrictions that have hurt businesses and the wider economy.
Meanwhile, doctors are warning against the practice of using cow dung in the belief it will ward off COVID-19, saying there is no scientific evidence for its effectiveness and that it risks spreading other diseases.
In the state of Gujarat in western India, some believers have been going to cow shelters once a week to cover their bodies in cow dung and urine in the hope it will boost their immunity against, or help them recover from, the coronavirus.
In Hinduism, the cow is a sacred symbol of life and the earth, and for centuries Hindus have used cow dung to clean their homes and for
prayer rituals, believing it has therapeutic and antiseptic properties.
“We see ... even doctors come here. Their belief is that this therapy improves their immunity and they can go and tend to patients with no fear,” said Gautam Manilal Borisa, an associate manager at a pharmaceuticals company, who said the practice helped him recover from COVID-19 last year.
He has since been a regular at the Shree Swaminarayan Gurukul Vishwavidya Pratishthanam, a school run by Hindu monks that lies just across the road from the Indian headquarters of Zydus Cadila, which is developing its own COVID-19 vaccine.
As participants wait for the dung and urine mixture on their bodies to dry, they hug or honour the cows at the shelter, and practice yoga to boost energy levels. The packs are then washed off with milk or buttermilk.
Doctors and scientists in India and across the world have repeatedly warned against practicing alternative treatments for COVID-19, saying they can lead to a false sense of security and complicate health problems.
“There is no concrete scientific evidence that cow dung or urine work to boost immunity against COVID-19, it is based entirely on belief,” said Dr. J.A. Jayalal, national president at the Indian Medical Association.
IT IS DIFFICULT FOR US TO SAY WHERE THESE BODIES HAVE COME FROM.