More than two million devotees bathed in the Ganges River on Monday, despite the rising number of new Covid-19 cases in India, a second wave that hit Bollywood stars is pulling migrant workers out of the cities and contributing to the slowdown of the vaccination programs around the country. world.
The biggest bathing day of the Hindu religious festival Kumbh Mela in the city of Haridwar in the North India, the great challenge faced by officials tried to bring about social distance as the daily rate of new Covid-19 cases over the weekend 160 000, India’s highest point since the beginning of the pandemic.
Police in Haridwar said they had tried to keep worshipers apart, but that it was not practical to issue fines on Monday, a favorable day when the largest crowd gathered on the banks of the river and waited. on their opportunity to bathe in the waters they believe. sins can cleanse and deliver from the cycle of death and rebirth.
A situation like a rush can arise if we try to enforce social distance at Ghats [the steps leading down to the water], so we can not enforce social distance here, ”the inspector general of the local police force, Sanjay Gunjyal, told the news agency ANI.
Footage from the riverbank showed large, mostly unmasked crowds of men and women pushing for space to stand. “There is no coronavirus,” a pilgrim told NDTV on Monday. ‘The Ganga will protect you. There is nothing to worry about. ”
The scenes are replete with other videos broadcast on Indian television, of people lying in the streets outside some hospitals unable to find a bed, and warnings from doctors in some countries that oxygen supplies, ventilators and the drug brakes are used to to treat severe treatment. cases, begin to become few.
Several states have reinstated the closures of the evening or weekend in response to the record rises, while others, including the worst-hit, Maharashtra, are considering more drastic measures. But officials are aware of the economic impact of quarantines in a country where about 90% of the workforce is informal and relies on day-to-day work to make money.
The country’s first exclusion, last March, caused an exodus of migrant workers on a scale equal to the division of the subcontinent more than 70 years ago. Workers are starting to leave again and the rate is likely to rise if hard locks in major cities are reinstated.
India’s experience was an example of the unpredictability of Covid-19. Early predictions that the subcontinental country – with poor health care in many rural areas and dense urban living conditions – would be overwhelmed by the virus were confused by a relatively low mortality rate and a sharp drop in new cases during the winter, while cases elsewhere in the world has risen.
By February, the first wave to peak six months earlier appears to be disappearing, with scientists speculating that parts of India’s nearly 1.4 billion people have been granted natural herd immunity. Seroprevalence studies indicate that about 22% of Indians were infected. by December.
Then cases began to grow faster and in greater numbers than ever, reaching more than 168,000 new infections on Sunday.
The death toll is still relatively low among India’s excessively young population, but is likely to obscure the previous wave’s peak of more than 1,200 per day.
Indian health experts say the revival is fueled by an infectious new “double mutant” variant, but has also blamed the lax attitude even among those who can afford to maintain social distance, including Bollywood actors such as Akshay Kumar, Alia Bhatt and Katrina Kaif, all of whom have tested positive over the past few weeks.
“During the earlier peak, one patient was able to spread the disease to 30-40% of his or her contacts,” Randeep Guleria, a physician and member of the country’s national task force on the virus, said at the weekend. “This time, 80-90% of the people who come in contact with a patient become positive.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday launched a “vaccination festival” in which Indians over 45 were encouraged to apply for doses as soon as possible, but embarked on a program of several large rallies in the state of West Bengal on Monday. where his party is embroiled in a bitter election battle with a regional rival.
India has administered more than 100 million doses of vaccines, but even with the largest manufacturer in the world, the Serum Institute of India, which directs most of its inventory for domestic use, deficiencies are reported in parts of the country.
The scope of the task is also large: if a dose of about 3 million vaccines per day is maintained, it is estimated that it will take 21 months to vaccinate the 75% of the country needed to achieve herd immunity. .
The delivery of the 10 million a day needed by health experts will dwarf the capacity of the country’s vaccine manufacturers, according to government data, a maximum of 112 million doses per month. An expert panel on Monday approved the emergency use of Russian Sputnik V, one of seven vaccines the government will manufacture locally by the end of the year.
The revival of the virus in India has had consequences for global vaccination efforts. When prices were low at the beginning of this year, the Indian government allowed the export of nearly 65 million doses as gifts or sales to foreign governments. This has reduced export approvals as the number of cases has grown, leaving fewer doses for customers, including the UN-backed global vaccination mechanism Covax, a key source for developing countries.