The horror of excess deaths returns in the Ghats of Varanasi. As the heat in cremation grounds rises, the plague of long lines, insufficient facilities and simultaneously burning pyres return, reports Amar Ujala.

On June 15, 2022, Amar Ujala, a widely circulating Hindi newspaper reported, in an exclusive report on how the Mokshanagari Kashi crematorium once again reports long lines of families waiting to carry out the last rites of their kin. After the surge of Covid-19 cases last year, the area reported around 40-50 deaths at the crematoriums. Since last week, these numbers have increased to 120 deaths.

People wait for four hours to bid their deceased goodbye while the officials call more people to carry out cremations. Amar Ujala reported that due to lack of platform(s) and construction work at Manikarnika shrine, space for cremation is falling short. Since last week, it has reported 100 to 120 deaths. From June 13 till June 14 night, over 135 cremations took place at Manikarnika Ghat.

One person told the newspaper that he travelled from Patna with his grandfather’s body. Further, as in times of Covid-19 surge, the demand for wood has also doubled. As many as 12 bodies are burnt simultaneously on lower platforms and 10 bodies are burnt on upper platforms.

Overall, people from districts of Purvanchal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh all visit the Kashi region for last rites. Part of this reason may be because locals are reluctant to allow the bodies to be buried in villages, on private land. In Ishwarpur village, Amar Ujala said that there was a dispute on Tuesday morning over the burial of an old man on private land. The SDM Pindra and the police pacified villagers by assuring them the son would bury the body away from the public. Similarly, a retired doctor from the Health department CMS also faced flak from villagers for trying to bury his 85-year-old deceased mother Surjakali in private land. While officials again had to intervene to settle the matter, the shocking fact is that these deaths are – once again – not reflected in government figures.

On June 9, India reported 7,240 active Covid-19 cases. This was the first time since March 1 that the daily number of active cases exceeded the 7,000 mark. In the month of June, over 39,400 fresh cases have been reported in India. For this reason, Maharashtra, Kerala, Delhi and Karnataka were put on high alert.

Accordingly, the four regions have reported around 1,000 (Delhi) to over 4,000 (Maharashtra) infections with Karnataka reporting around 800 deaths.  Maharashtra reported three deaths, Kerala reported eight deaths, Karnataka reported one death and Delhi reported two deaths by June 17. However Uttar Pradesh, despite reporting 20,83,072 cases with an increase of 413 cases has not reported any deaths.

On Friday, Indian Express also reported how Covid-19 cases in Uttar Pradesh increased by 413 cases on Thursday over the last 24 hours with Varanasi reporting 14 new cases. Still, there were no reports over the number of deaths.

Earlier in 2021, Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) published a report on the death figures in Varanasi. The survey in parts of Varanasi, Ghazipur, Jaunpur and Chandauli showed how the Ghats were inundated with bodies and lack of supplies during the second wave of Covid-19. Families failed to report deaths in rural areas and many people were unaware of the precautions necessary against Covid-19. Data suggested that areas in eastern UP especially Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Lok Sabha constituency Varanasi had 60 percent excess deaths during the pandemic relative to 2019.

As per CJP’s report, surveyed areas had 55-60 percent more deaths from January 2020 to August 2021 than expected in this period. Subsequent coverage of the region also showed how people were struggling to access hospitals even for regular virals or infections.

The state government was accused of manipulating Covid-related data to create the impression that the healthcare system was effective. Now, this report by Amar Ujala comes after the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) estimates of a whopping 47.4 lakh excess deaths in India. This number is nearly 10 times the country’s official Covid-19 reported deaths between 2020 and 2021.

With cases once again on the rise, people are being once again urged – at least by the four state governments on alert – to follow Covid-protocols and exercise social distancing.

Related:

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India ranks high in cumulative excess Covid-deaths: Lancet report
UP: 1,621 people on polling duty dead, but gov’t recognises only 3! 

The post UP: Long lines for funerals return in Varanasi ghats appeared first on SabrangIndia.

As the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic wreaks havoc across India, hospitals and cremation/burial grounds are being overrun. Meanwhile, the public health care system remains weak and unable to cope.

The Madras High Court has aptly described the grim situation, “We were lulled into a false sense of security to be hit by a Tsunami of infections now”.  Karnataka has been among the worst-affected states in March and April in India, with registering around 38,000 total cases as of May 3 and 16,000 deaths.

According to a News Minute report, the total number of actual deaths is much higher than what has been recorded by the government. The publication spoke to 6 crematoria and the managers of the Indian Christian cemetery burial ground and the Jumma Masjid Trust Board burial ground in Nandidurga and concluded that the actual toll of Covid deaths between April 18 to April 22 stood at 860 against the official figure of a mere 467.

SabrangIndia spoke to Chandu, a worker at the Kudlu Cremation Centre who said that he received roughly 310 covid bodies from March 1 to April 25. Kudlu is just one of the cremation grounds in the city that handles bodies of people killed by Covid in the city! Chandu said that the load has increased manifold and so they have been cremating only Covid bodies for the last three days. “The pressure is too much, we burnt 20 bodies on April 28, and 27 bodies on April 29. I feel sad,” he expressed.

Vinod, who works at one of the Covid designated crematoria in the capital city told SabrangIndia, “I too fear for my life now. There seems to be no end to this. Everyone is getting infected. Every day we see bodies just piling up. 30 bodies, 35 bodies, 40 bodies, when will this stop? These are the ones that reach government records, there are some who pass away at home, what about them?”

We tried to contact the Jumma Masjid Trust Board that manages the burial grounds in Bangalore city but there was no response.

Other districts in Karnataka are facing the same issue of under-reporting owing to miscommunication with government officials and lack of awareness about Coronavirus. Umar, a resident of Mangalore who volunteers with the Wellness Helpline for Covid related guidance, spoke to SabrangIndia at length about the facilities and the actual reality in Dakshina Kannada.

“I know 4 people who died of Covid yesterday in Mangalore. I know their names; I know where they live. But government data shows only one. I don’t think the difference between the actual death (in Dakshina Kannada) and government recorded death is a lot but we cannot completely rule out the possibility of discrepancy,” he said. He added that statistics also go missing as some patients don’t even make it to the hospitals. “If you die in a hospital, it should get reported, but there is no guarantee if you pass away at home,” said Umar. 

With respect to facilities in the District, he said private hospitals are functioning well, but government hospitals are lagging behind. “Private hospitals have around 85 ICU beds with ventilators, but government hospitals have a total of only 35 ICU ventilator beds and they are all filled to capacity currently,” said Umar. This raises an alarm about the 36th Covid patient who might need ventilator support while approaching a government facility. He said not enough people are getting vaccinated due to shortage and ignorance. “People are still so scared of the virus and don’t understand the nature of it. But several volunteers are helping with awareness. More people will come forward to get their vaccine shots and hopefully the shortage issue will also reduce,” said Umar.

Owing to the less population in the District, Umar also said that he has not witnessed anybody complaining about oxygen shortage but added that availability of cylinders is a potential threat. “But wellness helpline has placed an order for cylinders from Chennai,” he added.

Mercy Mission, a coalition of more than 25 NGOs working round the clock to assist people with Covid related emergencies in Bangalore has been getting a deluge of cremation and burial requests. Ameen-e-Mudassar of Mercy Mission informed SabrangIndia about the ‘horrible situation’ in the city and the sudden rise in infections rendering people helpless.

Mercy Mission’s activities also include helping families with the last rites of the departed and the said wing goes by the name Mercy Angels. “Since April, we have been getting around 20-25 requests for burial/cremation but we can manage only 15 bodies daily. It is a sad situation. We send volunteers to hospitals and they pick up the Covid bodies and wait for 6-8 hours for one single slot outside cremation grounds. For burials, our volunteers don’t have to bury the body themselves but instead, hand it over to the people working there. But the handing over process takes a lot of time since there are always 6 to 8 people in queues,” he said.

Not completely sure about the definite numbers, Ameen said there are around two cemeteries for Christians, five to six burial grounds for Muslims and seven cremation grounds in Bangalore. “In addition to all this, close to 23 open air cremation grounds have been constructed on the outskirts of Bangalore but there is still not enough space,” he added. According to an Indian Express report, at one of the open crematoria at Tavarekere (that became operational on April 28) over 50 cremations were conducted on May 1 and May 2.

Clearly perturbed about the current scheme of things, Ameen also told SabrangIndia that the worst hit are old citizens whose children are abroad. “Some people are so helpless; they cannot even bid farewell to their loved ones in a dignified manner because they fear the virus. They are abandoning cremations and burials,” he said.

In the month of April alone, they have received close to 50,000 distress calls for oxygen, tests, medicines but due to lack of enough resources and volunteers they could manage to entertain only 10,000 calls. For normal hospital beds, they have recorded around 5,000 calls and could manage to get only 200 beds for Bangalore residents. “There are no ICU beds, we have given up,” he said.

The crematoria and burial grounds are so overwhelmed with bodies that some have to be sent back to mortuaries at the hospital. A staffer at Victoria Hospital, which has a 48-cabinet mortuary facility, told Indian Express, “The mortuary had about 40 bodies earlier this week, and on average there are at least 25 bodies each day in the second wave.” In cases of accidents where the deceased person remains unidentified, the hospitals preserved the body for 3 days. But with the sudden pressure of Covid deaths, the hospital staff is telling the police to get autopsies done within a day to ease the pressure.

According to the Times of India, the positive cases are also being under-reported. Many people in Bangalore who are testing positive are not making to the state’s official data. TOI explained that for example, on April 27 three residents of Bangalore were given P (numbers 1464777, 1455336 and 144206) but these numbers were not in the April 28 state bulletin. Eleven individuals who died of Covid and were listed under fatalities in the April 27 bulletin, had P numbers that were way beyond Karnataka’s covid tally of 14,00,775. P numbers of Patient numbers reflects the total number of people infected with coronavirus.

A Bangalore resident (who requested anonymity) told SabrangIndia about the desperate need for beds in the city. He said, “My mother is a nurse in one of the designated Covid Hospitals in Bangalore. The issue here is non availability of beds. They are now having to send patients away.” As we tried contacting Victoria hospital, the largest public hospital in the city, they confirmed too that there are no ICU beds available.

The Karnataka High Court observed the same difficulty of dearth of beds, and directed the State to substantially increase hospital beds in Bengaluru as well as in those districts where there are more than 5,000 active Covid cases in April. According to a Bar & Bench report, the court termed the situation “quite alarming”. But the problem appears to persist. According to government’s updated list, there are only 35 ICU beds available in Bangalore for Covid patients.

The infrastructure is stretched thin. Hospitals are facing oxygen shortage and if not oxygen shortage, cylinder shortage worries people. A member from Karnataka’s Covid-19 Technical Advisory Committee told The Caravan, “In very big hospitals…there is a liquid oxygen system and oxygenators, so an oxygen-generating system is in place, but in smaller hospitals and nursing homes, we are finding that there is a definite shortage.”

On May 3, The Times of India reported the death of 24 Covid patients in Chamarajanagar, 175 kilometres away from Bengaluru, after the government district hospital ran out of oxygen supply on May 2. The Yediyurappa government has reportedly convened a meeting to probe the reason behind this tragedy and on the other hand, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi reacted to this by tweeting, “Died or Killed?” 

Died or Killed?

My heartfelt condolences to their families.

How much more suffering before the ‘system’ wakes up? pic.twitter.com/JrfZbIo7zm

— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) May 3, 2021

Dr. Prasanna of Pristine Hospital has raised concerns about oxygen scarcity and was quoted saying by the IE, “Our regular oxygen supplier said he ran out of stock and could provide only one cylinder in place of four yesterday. Even though the State Drugs Controller and his team worked all night with us to get supply back on track, we had no choice but to pay thrice the normal amount to get oxygen from other vendors.”

But the Health and Medical Education Minister, K Sudhakar, has refused to accept any shortage complaints and urged people to not panic. On April 18, he had tweeted, “There are 7 medical oxygen production plants in Karnataka with a daily production capacity of 812 tonnes, while the medical oxygen utilised on Saturday was about 272.61 tonnes.”

There are 7 medical oxygen production plants in Karnataka with a daily production capacity of 812 tonnes, while the medical oxygen utilised on Saturday was about 272.61 tonnes. So I appeal to everyone to not create unnecessary panic about shortage of medical oxygen in the state.

— Dr Sudhakar K (@mla_sudhakar) April 18, 2021

With the aggressive second wave witnessed in the month of April that might peak mid- May according to experts, it is difficult to forget the apocalyptic images of death and suffering around us. ICU beds are filled to capacity, there is no space to bury the dead and volunteers and medical staff are overwhelmed.

Related:

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Madhya Pradesh falsely reporting Covid deaths?
Are obituaries in Gujarat newspapers a better indicator of real Covid-deaths?

The post Covid-19: Karnataka unable to dispose of the dead, even as people struggle to survive appeared first on SabrangIndia.

As journalists enter crematoria to reveal the discrepancy between real and official Covid-19 deaths across India, Maharashtra’ Nashik and Beed districts report abandoned bodies in various cities. This amidst increasing reports of crematoria being overwhelmed in wake of an increasing number of bodies piling up for cremation everyday. 

On April 29, 2021, the Maharashtra government’s Covid-19 dashboard flashed 67,214 deaths in the state. With a fatality rate of 1.1 percent, crematoria across the region are reeling under the load of the growing death toll.  

Pune’s Baner Hindu crematorium told SabrangIndia that there was a waiting period of at least two hours before an aggrieved could say their final goodbye to kin.

Worse still, The Wire on April 28 reported about the lived experiences of Civil hospital an ambulance driver – originally a wireman – Manoj Patil, who drops around 25 to 30 bodies at the Amar Dham crematorium every day. Having witnessed cases where families abandoned their coronavirus positive relatives on roads or in hospitals or apartments, Patil along with his uncle ferried corpses in body bags to relevant kabristans or shamshan ghats.

The city’s largest crematorium Amar Dham struggles to attend to the ever-increasing number of bodies. At present, it deals with at least 100 bodies every day of which at least 60 deaths are related to Covid-19. As per the report, at least cremations can be seen at any given time. Mortician Sunita Patil, one of few women to hold such a post, told The Wire she had never witnessed such a scene in 20 years of service.

The crematorium even allowed for bodies to be burnt on pavements and roads inside the cremation ground to speed up the process but the queue of mourners remains. However, none of this is reflected in government records. As per the report, official figures show nine or ten Covid-19 deaths in Nashik city and 57 deaths overall in the district.

Meanwhile, Mumbai city turned its attention towards the fatality rate, hoping that the worst of the Covid-19 second wave is over. According to an Indian Express report, the death rate was as low as 0.2 percent until the first week of March. However, as of Thursday, April 29, the state Covid-19 dashboard flags a 2 percent fatality rate in the city.

This rise in deaths may be attributed to the healthcare infrastructure that is trying to stay afloat like its counterparts in other states. Speaking to the Indian Express, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) doctors stated three causes for the rising death toll:

·        lack of ICU and ventilators
·        delay in seeking timely care and
·        delay in being referred from nursing homes or smaller centres to tertiary centres.

But instead of waiting for the BMC to address this issue, many Mumbaikars have risen to the challenge by trying to ease the suffering of patients waiting for admission in hospitals. Notably, the Muslim community in the city has been working 24 hours to help in-home patients. One such community group in Mumbai’s Bhindi-Bazaar that transports oxygen cylinders to people told SabrangIndia that volunteers deliver 50-60 cylinders a day.

“We are trying to make sure that the patients at home have some form of comfort, at least until they get admission in hospitals. Usually, we help the poorer section of society so we do not charge for the cylinders. We even provide second or third refills if a patient in need contacts us,” said Sayed Subhani, one of the volunteers at the place. Rich patients who contact their 24-hour helpline, 9869197521/ 9833129121, try to arrange for the transport of the cylinders that come with the whole kit of pipe and other paraphernalia. Subhani said that while his team works to supply oxygen cylinders, other groups in the region provide ventilators or approach crematoria on behalf of or with the bereaved family.

“All citizens here are working together trying to help Mumbaikars in any way they can. Some help with the burial, others provide relief like us. We collect the material from various resources to help patients as long as possible,” he said.

Still, the situation drastically differs from one district to another in Maharashtra. For example, in Beed district, with 862 cumulative cases of Covid-19 deaths, the fatality rate is 1.7 percent, close to Mumbai’s recent figures. Yet, unlike Mumbai there are no reported attempts to protect fellow citizens by good samaritans. In fact, on April 27, the Times of India reported corpses of 22 Covid-19 patients left in a single ICU ambulance in Ambajogai region of Beed district.

People were left outraged after an incident where local police allegedly snatched mobile phones of relatives who were recording the whole incident. While officials assured that they would look into the matter, earlier reports by The Hindu on April 7 already indicated that the area was running out of space to cremate their deceased. A makeshift facility was created on the Mandwa road away from residential areas where eight bodies of Covid-19 victims were cremated on one pyre.

Nonetheless, in terms of information, the district administration regularly updates hospital availability in the district. Updated data on the municipality website still shows 741 vacant hospitals beds including ones equipped with oxygen and ventilators. It may be mentioned that on Friday, the government dashboard reported 51,959 positive and 11,923 active cases in the district with a recovery rate of 75.4 percent.

Another problem is that such reports have also spooked smaller communities living in more remote areas like Washim city in a district of the same name. In conversation with SabrangIndia, resident Aathvan Bhanawat said that locals, mostly labourers and workers, hesitated to approach hospitals even if they showed symptoms of Covid-19. “Call it a fear of the vaccine, or hospitals in general, locals here do not want to travel to hospitals. They prefer to use their traditional methods to deal with the infection. There haven’t been any serious cases or deaths here so far but accessibility is a problem,” he said.

On Tuesday, the Bombay High Court told the state government that bodies cannot be kept lying for hours to be cremated. A division bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice G. S. Kulkarni instructed the government and civic authorities to come up with a mechanism to address the issue. They further stated that hospitals must not release bodies from the crematorium unless crematoriums have a vacancy.

Related:

EXCLUSIVE: Hundreds die of Covid and data goes missing, UP gov’t remorseless
Are obituaries in Gujarat newspapers a better indicator of real Covid-deaths?
Madhya Pradesh falsely reporting Covid deaths?
Minority miracle frontline workers leading battle against Coronavirus in Maharashtra

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