India’s COVID crisis spreads to villages, where health care is hard to find

The story of Banail has been playing out in villages across India as the virus continues its deadly surge: Rural areas, where over 65 percent of India’s 1.3 billion people live, had been spared in the first wave of the pandemic but are now facing devastating numbers of infections. Three quarters of all districts in India are reporting a positivity rate of more than 10 percent, a health official said Tuesday, an indication of how widely the virus had spread... At the center of this crisis in the hinterland is the state of Uttar Pradesh — home to 230 million people, more than the population of Brazil. It is also one of the poorest and least-developed states. In April, local elections were held in villages across the state, which officials say led to the surge in rural areas. According to a teachers’ organization, more than 700 government teachers who were assigned to poll duty died after the elections, many after testing positive for the coronavirus. At the start of the month, the state was recording just over 2,500 cases. By the end of the month, as the elections wrapped up, cases surged to nearly 35,000... In Banail, the village seeing a spurt of deaths, the primary health center is a rundown pink building with broken windows and a motorbike parked in one of the treatment rooms. The doctor had been away for more than a month — first for a government training program, and then in quarantine after working in a covid hospital in the district. A pharmacist on duty said he told villagers to call covid helpline numbers for assistance. “The government has made no arrangements. They have left us at the mercy of God,” said Rakesh Sisodiya, a villager. “Where should people go?”