35-hour curfew begins in UP as coronavirus wreaks havoc

Dubai: India’s most populous state Saturday put its 200 million inhabitants under a 35-hour curfew to contain the spread of the coronavirus which has suddenly spiralled out of control.

Uttar Pradesh crossed the grim milestone of 150,000 COVID-19 cases and neared 10,000 deaths this week according to the state health department, sparking outrage against the government’s handling of the situation.

Amid mounting deaths in state capital Lucknow, local authorities have set up a tin wall to block the view of a cremation site.

The development came after harrowing visuals of rows of funeral pyres at the site went viral on social media.

Grim parallels

Aghast residents are now drawing parallels between the newly-built Lucknow wall and the 400-metre wall erected along a road in Ahmedabad in February 2020 so that the then US president Donald Trump wouldn’t see a slum as his motorcade passed through the city during his visit to Gujarat for the Namaste Trump rally.

The Lucknow wall is not as long, but it hides a bigger failing – the burgeoning number of COVID-19 deaths, many of which local journalists and families of the deceased say, could have been averted had the healthcare system not collapsed.

On Thursday, the wife of an ex-judge gasped to death at her Lucknow home after they couldn’t get an ambulance or hospital bed despite over 50 calls on a toll-free number over two days, media reports said.

Former district judge Ramesh Chandra and his wife Madhu had tested positive for the virus days earlier.

'No one to help cremate'

Until Friday, Chandra was still struggling to perform her last rites due to long waits at the crematorium. “There is no one to help us in cremation of the body, please help. Since 7am (Wednesday) I have made over 50 calls to numbers provided by the district administration, but no help came in form of medicine or hospital admission. Due to negligence of the administration my wife (64) succumbed on Thursday,” he said in an open letter being widely shared on social media.

Ambulance delay is also said to have cost the life of Lucknow’s brightest star in the firmament of history - Yogesh Praveen, 82 - on Monday, his family has alleged.

The historian’s brother Kamesh Srivastava told local media they kept waiting for an ambulance for two hours before taking Parveen to Balrampur hospital in a private car where he was declared dead.

“Everyone seems to be no more than one degree of separation from a coronavirus death in Lucknow,” said Dubai-based Jingesh Singh, who lost “three loved ones” in less than five days.

“Several of my relatives are in hospital in varying stages of the disease. It seems we have been abandoned,” he said.

“Bad is an understatement. The situation in Lucknow is apocalyptic. Dead bodies are piling at hospitals and there appears to be no one to pick them,” said senior Lucknow-based journalist Kulsum Mustafa in an interview with Gulf News on Saturday. “There is a total system failure. We had so much time to prepare ourselves but we didn’t,” she said, recounting the experience of a friend whose husband died of Covid-19 at a hospital recently.

“She was told to bring a white sheet to cover the body and take it with her as there was no transport available.”

The statewide curfew which began at 8pm yesterday will continue till 7 am on Monday and affect a population more than three times the size of United Kingdom’s.

“Essential services, polling officials for the Panchayat polls, health and sanitation workers will be exempted from the curfew,” read an order issued by chief secretary RK Tewari.

Even before the curfew, the pandemic had brought the vibrant city of Lucknow to a near stand-still and exposed gaping holes in its healtcare system.

All main markets had already been voluntarily shut down by traders following an appeal by their union bodies.

Aminabad, which used to be abuzz during Ramadan, remains deserted. Every evening hundreds would go ‘Ganjing’ --a colloquial epithet to describe the act of strolling in the city’s most popular market, Hazaratganj. Now the sideways are eerily empty.

“The only places that are busy are hospitals and funeral homes,” said author and storyteller Himashu Bajpai who has penned a poem to describe the all-pervasive fear.

“People are afraid because they are completely on their own. They have lost trust in the system. In hospitals they can’t get beds, in drug stores they can’t find medicines, in crematoriums they can’t find wood to burn the dead,” he said over the phone.

To make the ire complete, Uttar Pradesh chief minister has tested positive for coronavirus as have hundreds of doctors and senior administrative officials.

In the welter of all this, residents are accusing the government of underreporting virus deaths and cases.

NDTV’s Lucknow-based resident editor Kamal Khan said the allegations are not unfounded.

“The Uttar Pradesh government reported 124 COVID-19 deaths in Lucknow between April 7 and April 13 but the city saw 400 funerals at the crematoriums, besides scores of burials at cemeteries during this time,” Khan said.

Meanwhile, several leading private diagnostic including Dr Lal Path-Labs and SRL Diagnostics said they have not been collecting samples for COVID-19 testing for nearly 10 days, citing orders from the administration to “not conduct tests”. Others like RML Mehrotra Pathology said they have stopped sample collection at centres and are only testing samples collected from hospitals due to “logistical constraints.”

On Friday additional chief secretary for information Navneet Sehgal warned of action against private laboratories if they refuse to test despite having capacity. Dubai-based stylist I.Bedi said a false negative report proved fatal for her cousin in Lucknow.

“He had difficulty breathing so his family insisted he takes a second Covid-19 test. This time the report came out positive. He was taken to a hospital but it was too late as his lungs had already been damaged. He died within a week. He would have turned 50 this week,” said Bedi.

The Lucknow administration on Friday announced a list of 17 private hospitals that have been authorised to treat COVID-19 patients. The government has also launched a coronavirus command centre to facilitate better treatment of patients and timely delivery of medicines.

But its mechanism raised serious questions after a newspaper released a recorded conversation between Covid-19 patient Santosh Kumar and a member of the helpline.

Singh had isolated himself after testing positive for COVID-19 and had called the helpline seeking medical advice. On April 15, a representative of the command centre called Singh and asked if he had downloaded the home isolation app. When Singh said he was not aware of any such app, the woman at the other end of the line mocked at him. “You are an illiterate… go die,” she said before hanging up.

Singh’s whose father is a BJP functionary in Lucknow has now sought a probe into the incident.