Officials in Covid-ravaged India have erected a net across the Ganges after dozens of bodies of suspected coronavirus patients washed up.
Seventy-one corpses were said to have been found in Bihar, north-east India, sparking fears that the virus is raging in the country’s rural areas.
It comes after India’s coronavirus death toll passed a grim milestone with more than 250,000 people dead as of Wednesday after the deadliest 24 hours since the pandemic began.
Bihar’s water resources minister Sanjay Kumar said on Twitter on Wednesday that a “net has been placed” in the river on the state border with Uttar Pradesh and patrols increased.
He added that the local government was “pained at both the tragedy as well as harm to the river Ganga” and said that examinations found the corpses had been dead for up to five days.
(Image: REUTERS)
He said: “We’ve advised [Uttar Pradesh] administration to be vigilant; our district admin is keeping vigil too. Advise all to give all respect to those dead.”
The devastating second wave of Covid erupted in February, inundating hospitals and medical staff, as well as crematoriums and mortuaries.
Concerns are mounting over the transmissibility of the new variant that is driving infections in India and also spreading worldwide.
Indian state leaders clamoured for vaccines to stop the second wave and the devastation it has wrought, urging Prime Minister Narendra Modi to stop exporting doses, ramp up production and help them procure urgent supplies from overseas.
“People will die in the same way in the third and fourth waves as they have this time without more vaccines,” Delhi’s Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia told reporters.
Deaths grew by a record 4,205 while infections rose by 348,421 in the 24 hours to Wednesday, taking the tally past 23 million, health ministry data showed.
Experts believe the actual numbers could be five to 10 times higher.
Funeral pyres have blazed in city parking areas, and bodies have washed up on the banks of the river Ganges, immersed by relatives whose villages were stripped bare of the wood needed for cremations.
(Image: REUTERS)
Lacking beds, drugs and oxygen, many hospitals in the world’s second-most populous country have been forced to turn away droves of sufferers.
“We seem to be plateauing around 400,000 cases a day,” the Indian Express newspaper quoted virologist Shahid Jameel as saying. “It is still too early to say whether we have reached the peak.”
The country accounts for half of Covid cases and 30 per cent of deaths worldwide, the World Health Organization said.
It has designated the B.1.617 variant found there of global concern but said its full impact is not yet clear.
The variant has been detected in six countries in the Americas as well as the UK, while the European Union urged all of its 27 member countries to halt non-essential travel from India to limit its spread.