At the city's Chamrajpet crematorium, authorities had to put up a 'housefull' sign and families were told to wait with bodies in ambulances to avoid overcrowding
Editor's note: As the second wave of #coronavirus infections ravages parts of India, millions of front-line workers and citizens are caught up in the middle, providing their services to distressed families on one hand while trying to cope themselves on the other. This is part four of a series profiling the stories of these people.
As COVID-19 deaths in Bengaluru continue to surge, the situation on the ground is worse than what the government’s data shows. The workers handling the bodies see the worst of it. The toll is through the roof and the death rate is alarming. One of the most populous cities in the country, Bengaluru has been one of the hardest-hit cities by the second wave of the #coronavirus .
On 7 May, the Karnataka government reported a positivity rate of over 30 percent, and nearly 49,000 new cases of #coronavirus .
Of these, over 21,000 were from Bengaluru alone. The administration, at the beginning of the pandemic, boasted of the lowest infection numbers in the country. It was so enamored with its “Bengaluru model” that it dismantled war rooms and disbanded volunteer teams.
Now, the government is scrambling as people are dying. #Oxygen is running out at local hospitals and urban public health centers (UPHCs) are running out of sample wells when people come in to get tested. Meanwhile, the graveyards around Bengaluru practically have no space for the dead.
Pramod*, a worker from North Karnataka, is now a gravedigger at the Hosur road Indian Christian cemetery. He said he has been working round the clock for the past two months.
“I usually do construction work, but most of it in the city has all but dried up. My family doesn’t know I’m doing this work (digging graves),” he said.
It’s 11 am, and the bodies have begun arriving from #hospitals. It can take up to two hours to properly dig a proper grave. It is simply not possible to dedicate that kind of time to a single grave, Pramod said.
Yohann, a #volunteer at the cemetery, helps lift the coffin from the gate until the grave. They wear PPE kits and help the family, especially when there’s no one to help them to lower the body into the ground.
Yohann said that there’s a huge disparity between the number the government is reporting and the actual number of bodies arriving at the cemetery.
News Source: https://www.firstpost.com/
0 Comments