Village sheds light on India’s surging Covid-19 caseload
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Rajewadi/Guwahati — The quaint, sugar cane-growing village of Rajewadi in India’s west did not have a single confirmed coronavirus case until mid-August. Now one in four people there is positive for the virus, with police blaming a local religious event for the spread.
Such spurts in cases in small towns and villages, where mask wearing and social distancing have nearly vanished and community gatherings are back, explain why India’s infections are now rising faster than anywhere else in the world and why the country is set to top 4-million cases.
Based on current trends, India will overtake Brazil as the second-worst affected nation after the US in days.
The South Asian country reported 83,883 new infections on Thursday, surpassing its previous global record for the highest single-day rise. Cases are accelerating in its towns, villages and smaller cities while the situation has stabilised in the big metropolis of New Delhi and Mumbai.
The World Health Organisation has said India’s relatively low mortality rate could rise as the virus fans out to the vast countryside, where health facilities are basic at best.
In Rajewadi — a small village of about 360 in India’s most-affected state of Maharashtra — authorities launched widespread testing only after an elderly resident was found to have died of Covid-19 on August 17, said Aniruddha Athalye, a senior health official in Satara district where the village is located.
Since then, 91 people there have tested positive and the village has been sealed off by police.
No social distancing
Government officials, police and residents said days before the death — the village’s only fatality from the disease — the person and about 30 others had gathered one night to offer prayers to a local deity. They had dinner together after the rituals, and throughout the function no-one wore masks or practised social distancing.
Police said almost all those who attended have tested positive. Police have lodged a complaint against the organiser for violating the state’s epidemic act.
A person who saw the function but did not attend said “everyone was behaving like coronavirus won’t catch them”. He declined to be named while police investigate the case. The village is now barricaded with bamboo and wood, with a poster describing it as a containment zone.
Sanjay Bhosale, a village grocery shop owner whose son has contracted the virus, said residents had grown tired of the virus rules and started ...
Such spurts in cases in small towns and villages, where mask wearing and social distancing have nearly vanished and community gatherings are back, explain why India’s infections are now rising faster than anywhere else in the world and why the country is set to top 4-million cases.
Based on current trends, India will overtake Brazil as the second-worst affected nation after the US in days.
The South Asian country reported 83,883 new infections on Thursday, surpassing its previous global record for the highest single-day rise. Cases are accelerating in its towns, villages and smaller cities while the situation has stabilised in the big metropolis of New Delhi and Mumbai.
The World Health Organisation has said India’s relatively low mortality rate could rise as the virus fans out to the vast countryside, where health facilities are basic at best.
In Rajewadi — a small village of about 360 in India’s most-affected state of Maharashtra — authorities launched widespread testing only after an elderly resident was found to have died of Covid-19 on August 17, said Aniruddha Athalye, a senior health official in Satara district where the village is located.
Since then, 91 people there have tested positive and the village has been sealed off by police.
No social distancing
Government officials, police and residents said days before the death — the village’s only fatality from the disease — the person and about 30 others had gathered one night to offer prayers to a local deity. They had dinner together after the rituals, and throughout the function no-one wore masks or practised social distancing.
Police said almost all those who attended have tested positive. Police have lodged a complaint against the organiser for violating the state’s epidemic act.
A person who saw the function but did not attend said “everyone was behaving like coronavirus won’t catch them”. He declined to be named while police investigate the case. The village is now barricaded with bamboo and wood, with a poster describing it as a containment zone.
Sanjay Bhosale, a village grocery shop owner whose son has contracted the virus, said residents had grown tired of the virus rules and started ...