With 366,161 new infections and 3,754 deaths reported on Monday, things have gotten so bad in India that dozens of bloated and half-burned bodies are washing up on the banks of the Ganges River in northern India.
The Ganges River flows through the states of Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, and finally into West Bengal where it empties out into the Bay of Bengal. The river is sacred to Hindus, yet it is also is threatened with severe pollution.
According to The Guardian, local official, Ashok Kumar said that about 40 corpses washed up in Buxar district near the border between Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, two of India’s poorest states. The bodies are believed to be COVID-19 victims.
The BBC reports it confirmed the presence of the bodies near the Bihar-Uttar Pradesh border, and says locals put the number at a minimum of 40, though local media suggests the count could be more than twice that high.
District officials put the body count closer to 100, saying that some of the bodies were bloated and partially burned and could have been in the river for several days. They told the AFP they believed the bodies had been dumped in the river because cremation sites were overwhelmed or because relatives could not afford wood for funeral pyres.
“It is really shocking for us,” local resident Kameshwar Pandey told AFP. Dustrict officials also issued a statement saying, “It is clear that the bodies are not from Buxar district. But it is possible that they have floated down the river from other cities situated along the river.”
At least 24 of India’s 36 states under lockdown
To date, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has resisted calls to lock down the world’s second most populous country. This is despite India’s latest total tally of 22.66 million coronavirus cases along with 246,116 deaths as hospitals run out of oxygen and beds and morgues and crematoria overflow.
Even though many states have imposed strict lockdowns over the last month while others have placed curbs on movement and shut cinemas, restaurants, pubs, and shopping malls, Modi has managed to hold off making a decision to save his country.
He is still stinging from the criticism thrown his way for allowing huge gatherings at a religious festival and holding large election rallies during the past two months – even as cases surged.
“A failure of governance of epic and historic proportions,” Vipin Narang, a political science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States, said on Twitter, reports Reuters.
Sonia Gandhi, the chief of the main opposition Congress party, blamed the government for abdicating its responsibility by leaving vaccinations to states, Reuters partner ANI said on Twitter.
Dehli’s health minister said Monday the city only had 3 to 4 days worth of AstraZeneca vaccines left.They are made by the Serum Institute of India and branded Covishield. But by Monday, the world’s largest vaccine producer had fully vaccinated just over 34.8 million, or about 2.5 percent, of a population of about 1.35 billion, government data shows.
