By Nafis Haider and Shaheen Muddassir

Patna: Panic, confusion and trauma are rife among people in the northern Indian state of Bihar amid the second wave of coronavirus that has devastated the country.

Many say the poor response mechanism of the state government and the surge in deaths in the state have left them in “shock and trauma.”

Even though the government on June 15 announced relaxations in the lockdown-related restrictions and extended the night curfew for another one week – June 22, people say the “period of trauma is far from over.”

The past two months have left the Bihar residents reel under the second wave of Covid-19. The death toll mounted to record-breaking levels across the country, including Bihar.

“We are left with nothing here. Our locality does not have a good hospital and the nearby hospitals which provide good medical service are charging hefty amounts from patients,” Moin Ansari from Phulwari Sharif Patna told TwoCircles.net.

Ansari, a local shop owner, said, “We are not even able to find the necessary medicines for Covid-19. The condition of my locality is really bad.”

The Covid-19 lockdown has severely affected the market. “There is no other means of livelihood for me. Most of the people here are like that,” he added.

Days after the government found 71 dead bodies in the river Ganga in Bihar’s Buxar district of the state in May, more bodies were also fished out near the Gulabi Ghat in Patna. The corpses of suspected Covid victims floating in the Ganga have left the residents of nearby colonies traumatized in Patna, the state capital.

Shadaab Khan, a resident of Haroon Nagar colony, explained the chaotic state of things. “People were not coming out of their homes to give medicines to those suffering from Covid-19. You cannot depend on even your neighbors as everyone is afraid they will catch the disease. The old people were the first to die during the month of Ramadan. People were so traumatized by the number of deaths from this colony alone that we had to call off the practice of announcement of death from the mosque.:

People from the region blame the “inefficiency of the Bihar government” for failing to test people arriving from other states.

Many villages, they say, had zero cases before the arrival of people from outside. Later they witnessed a rise in Covid-19 positive patients and subsequent deaths.

In a high-level meeting in May, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar showed concern about proper testing and quarantine of migrants who are coming back to Bihar amid the second wave of Covid-19, but, people allege that “nothing concrete happened on the ground.”

Several people complained to TwoCircles.net the testing at government hospitals was poor and unreliable.

Tasneem Malik developed high fever, diarrhea and had other symptoms associated with the coronavirus in early May. “I, obviously, went for a Covid-19 test, but the report came negative.” However, as his conditioned after two days, he went for another test that showed him Covid-19 positive.

People also allege that the state government has downplayed the count of Covid-19 positive cases “by pronouncing people negative even though they are positive.”

Between May 5 and 15, the positivity rate has come down from around 15 percent to 5 percent. The decline can be attributed to the effect of lockdown but such a sharp decline has raised “suspicions of data manipulation.’

On March 18, Bihar recorded the highest single-day Covid-19 deaths as 111 persons succumbed to the virus. Locals, however, maintained that the death toll is much higher than what is projected in the official data.

The claim of the locals is substantiated by the inconsistencies in the death toll of Buxar district reported by Bihar’s chief secretary and the Patna divisional commissioner. The chief secretary submitted a report in the Patna High Court in May that since March 1 only six deaths due to Covid-19 had taken place in Buxar, while the divisional commissioner’s affidavit mentioned between 5 May and 14 May, 789 cremations were conducted at just one cremation ground of the district.

Due to the inadequate health infrastructure in the state, the exponential rise in Covid-19 cases has only made the situation worse.

Reports said that the exhausted healthcare workers, including doctors at the hospital, are made to work in a “severe infectious environment without proper equipment.”

The Indian Medical Association in its report in May said that out of 269 doctors who died in the second wave of Covid-19, as many as 78 were from Bihar. The required strength of doctors in Bihar is around 17,000, but there are only 8,000 doctors in the state.

The death of doctors due to Covid-19 was accompanied by an already shortage of staff. The Indian army created two field hospitals to assist the Bihar government in fighting the rising number of cases but compared to the rising demands of doctors and beds in the city, locals said that “they are a mere eyewash.”

On June 11, Kumar claimed some 13 million people were vaccinated for Covid-19 across the state; However, people reeling under Covid-19 trauma say the state will take some time to “get back to normal life.”

(Shaheen Muddassir studies History at Jamia Millia Islamia and Nafis Haider studies Political Science at Aligarh Muslim University.)

Source: twocircles.net