Horror in India: Official admission that coronavirus corpses washed up in Ganges

Corpses of patients who succumbed to covid-19 have been found in its rivers India, the government of a state announced in a letter to Reuters, in the first official admission that this particularly dangerous practice is applied, which may be due to poverty and fear of the disease prevailing in the villages.

Images of corpses being swept away by the current in the river Ganges, which the Hindus consider sacred, have caused shock in India, which is currently facing the strongest wave in the world of the coronavirus pandemic.

Although the media has linked the recent increase in river carcasses to a pandemic, the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, with a population of 240 million, has not commented publicly so far.

“The government has information that the bodies of those who succumb to covid-19 or any other disease are dumped in rivers instead of being buried properly,” senior government official Manoz Kumar Singh said in a May 14 letter to the authorities. regions of Uttar Pradesh.

“As a result of this practice, corpses have been found in rivers in many areas,” he added.

Singh confirmed to Reuters that the letter was authentic, but added that autopsies on four or five bodies in the state’s Gazipur district had not revealed a coronavirus infection.

“The corpses have decomposed, so I’m not sure the coronavirus could have been detected in the condition they are in,” he said.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday called on officials to increase their health resources in rural areas – home to 70% of the country’s population – and step up their surveillance as covid-19 spreads rapidly. in the villages of India, after ravaging the cities.

The state of Uttar Pradesh, which has more inhabitants than Brazil or Pakistan, has been hit hard by the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic in India. Health officials say many cases in the state’s villages, where the majority of the population lives, are never reported.

In his letter, Singh complained that the lack of resources to buy materials such as wood for cremation, religious superstitions in some communities and the fact that families abandon patients for fear of illness are among the possible reasons for the increase in the number. of corpses thrown into rivers.

He called on village officials to ensure that no corpses were dumped in the rivers, and said the state government would have to pay 5,000 rupees (about 56 euros) to poor families to cremate or bury their dead.

At the same time, the authorities of Uttar Pradesh have asked the police to conduct patrols on the rivers.

India has been officially reporting about 4,000 deaths from covid-19 every day for about two weeks, but health officials warn that the actual number is likely to be much higher as not enough diagnostic tests are being performed in rural areas.

The increase in the number of deaths has brought incinerators to their limits in many areas and has increased the cost of burial.

Yesterday, Uttar Pradesh government spokesman Navnit Sehgal denied media reports that up to 2,000 bodies of potential coronavirus victims had been pulled from the state and neighboring Bihar rivers in recent days.

“We continue to retrieve 10 to 20 corpses from time to time,” Sehgal told Reuters, adding that residents of some riverside villages do not cremate their dead due to Hindu traditions during religious festivals.

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