Bihar: Weddings, funerals super spreader as Covid-19 penetrates rural areas

BETTIAH: A sudden burst of deaths amid a largely untested rural populace increasingly gripped with Covid-like symptoms in West Champaran have bolstered the worst fears that the coronavirus has penetrated rural Bihar with its sting of death.
“We are overstretched and also understaffed now with many health workers and technicians testing positive themselves,” civil surgeon Arun K Sinha said.Packed beyond capacity with Covid patients, the district’s premier hospital -GMCH- put up a ‘No Bed. No Admission’ notice on Tuesday itself.
“Today we lost Dr Dharmendra Prasad, associate professor of medicine, at a private nursing home in Patna,” GMCH principal Binod Prasad condoled on Wednesday. With over a hundred deaths at hospital facilities, the number of Covid casualties, however, are feared much more with increasingly viral accounts of deaths pouring in from far-flung villages.
Nine people from rural areas died either post admission or before at the sub-divisional hospital at Narkatiaganj on Wednesday. Chandrika Devi (60) from Damrapur, Dayanand Gupta (65) from BhikhnaThori, along with Rajpati Devi (45) from Bhataura village died of Covid at Narkatiaganj. Another half a dozen critical patients from rural areas also succumbed. They included Ravi Kant Nath Tiwari from Lauriya and Yashoda Devi from Nonis Tola. Local reporters said four others were dead on arrival and their kin took the bodies home. All of them were untested.
Adding to wedding congregations and festival shopping, funerals of both suspected and confirmed Covid deceased have become new catalysts in the spread of coronavirus. Bhojpuri lyricist Shyam Dehati, reported in these columns, was cremated with the fanfare of the celebrity at his native village Mahui-Naukatola on April 19.
“Another villager Radhey Shyam Pathak’s funeral was also conducted with traditionally elaborate rituals,” mukhiya Sudha Singh said, bemoaning that only a fraction of the village got themselves tested. “I hope the lockdown is strictly implemented in villages as people are still congregating without precautions,” she prayed, bemoaning that four more villagers have died since Saturday. “All of them went without tests even though symptoms have rampaged across,” she added.
The two funerals, including folk star Dehati’s, are not the only protocol-dismissing last rites. The case of Shambhu Yadav, PACS chief and husband of Laukaria mukhiya Madhu Devi, is shocking. Yadav died of Covid at the GMCH last Friday. “A large crowd gathered as his body arrived wrapped in plastic,” a villager, not willing to be named, said, ruing: “The kin ripped open the body bag for the family and gathered crowd to have their last darshan before a well attended cremation on the banks of the Gandak.”
Bairiya BDO Krishna Ram denied knowledge of any wrong doing. “Ask the police,” he advised. “I have rejoined duty after leave only yesterday. There is no station diary entry of any breach of Covid protocol,” SHO Dushyant said.
Anand, the son of deceased Shamhu, too claimed that Covid protocols were followed. “We brought the body home to show mummy. People were at a distance,” he claimed. However, when asked about a picture, also available with TOI, he said: “I only took the picture. Ab log viral kar diyen to kya karen?”
The picture shows the dead body open for public viewing, the thin black plastic bodybag ripped apart. Asked if he and his family weren’t afraid of becoming positive, Anand, an engineering student in Dehradun, said: “My brother too had tested positive. Pandey ji at GMCH said ‘don’t take tension. Go and be in home isolation’. We are ok.”
Whn asked who is Pandey ji, he said, “A co-villager working at the GMCH.”
Another four villagers in an arc of about ten km in Gaunaha block died on Tuesday-Wednesday. Pardesi Lal of Jamunia, Mohan Gaurav (32)of Baithania, Bikau Hajra (55) of Dewar and Rajeshwar Mahto (36) of Rajpur Gaon, all died suffering from high fever, cough and cold. Except for Mahto who had tested negative in the antigen test, the rest went untested.