India's tally passes 25 million as entire families wiped out

NEW DELHI • India's total coronavirus caseload surged past 25 million yesterday as the latest wave ravages rural areas across the world's second-most populous country. And most villages have no way to fight the virus.

In Basi, about 1½ hours from the capital New Delhi, about three-quarters of the village's 5,400 people are sick and more than 30 have died in the past three weeks.

It has no healthcare facilities, no doctors and no oxygen canisters. And unlike India's social-media literate urban population, residents cannot appeal on Twitter to an army of strangers willing to help.

"Most deaths in the village have been caused because there was no oxygen," said Mr Sanjeev Kumar, the newly elected head of the farming community. "The sick are being rushed to the district headquarters and those extremely sick patients have to travel about four hours," he said, adding that many do not make it in time.

It is a scenario playing out all over India. In interviews with representatives from more than 18 towns and villages in different parts of the country, officials outlined the scale of the carnage - from entire families wiped out to bloated bodies floating down the Ganges River and farmland left untended due to a lack of workers.

Many people said the scale of the crisis is bigger than official numbers reveal, with villagers afraid to leave home even if they are sick and local authorities failing to properly record virus fatalities.

The total tally of cases surged past the 25 million mark with 263,533 new infections over the past 24 hours, while deaths from Covid-19 rose by a record 4,329. Only the United States has had more cases, or a worse single-day death toll, when it lost 5,444 people on Feb 12. But whereas the pandemic peaked months ago in the US, there is no certainty that India's infections have.

Though the official count shows new cases subsiding, there are fears that the new, highly infectious B1617 variant, first found in India, is running out of control and many cases, particularly in rural areas, are going unreported due to lack of testing.

India's total caseload since the virus first struck over a year ago, stands at 25.23 million, while the death toll is at 278,719, according to health ministry data.

Anger is building both at Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration and the local authorities for failing to bolster medical infrastructure after a virus wave last year, including securing sufficient supplies of oxygen and vaccines.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) last month lost local elections in Basi and other parts of Uttar Pradesh - India's most populous state - just as the country started recording almost 400,000 new cases a day. The sentiment on the ground suggests broader troubles for Mr Modi and his fellow BJP leader Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh who has been mentioned as a possible successor to the Prime Minister. The state holds elections next year.

"We had complete support for Modi and Yogi, but now whatever happens we will vote the BJP out," Mr Sahab Singh, 72, said in the centre of Basi, which was virtually empty. He noted people were too scared to leave their homes.

Covid-19 is adding to Mr Modi's troubles along with a severe economic downturn, rising unemployment and farmer protests against a law perceived to favour big business, according to Dr Nikita Sud, an associate professor in international development at the University of Oxford and author of a book on Hindu nationalism. "It is too simplistic to say that Covid mismanagement spells the turning of the tide for the Modi regime," Dr Sud said. "However, the regime looks out of its depth for the first time since coming to power in 2014."

As leaders in Delhi struggle to contain the health crisis, horrifying scenes are playing out across India. Last week in the eastern state of Bihar, residents woke up to find as many as 70 bodies floating in the Ganges River. With crematoriums overflowing as the death toll surges, they feared these bodies were Covid-19 victims whose families could not properly lay them to rest. More corpses have since been reported along the river.

Both the federal and state governments "have failed us all", said Mr Rajesh Sharma, who owns a travel company in the Hindu pilgrimage city of Ujjain in the central state of Madhya Pradesh.

"India had a full year to prepare, but except for sending vaccines out of the country for personal credit and glory nothing much was done," he said.

BLOOMBERG, REUTERS