COVID scare as scores of bodies wash ashore in Bihar’s Buxar

Panic spread in Bihar’s Buxar Monday morning when several decomposing bodies washed up on the banks of Ganga at Chausa town, on Bihar-Uttar Pradesh border. Residents immediately informed officials amid fears that the bodies were that of COVID-19 victims. This comes in the middle of an aggressive second wave of COVID in India that has left the healthcare system teetering and administration running short of burial and cremation space.

While a sub-divisional officers put the body count at 12, another district official said that up to 40-50 bodies were seen floating on the river.

“10-12 corpses that were seen in Ganga came floating from a distance. It seems these corpses were floating for the last 5-7 days. We don’t have a tradition of immersing bodies in rivers. We are making arrangements to cremate these corpses,” Buxar sub-divisional officer KK Upadhyay told ANI.

The officer added that they were trying to ascertain whether the corpses came from Varanasi and Allahabad. “We are alerting officials near ghat areas to make sure that it does not happen again,” Upadhyay added.

Chausa district official Ashok Kumar was quoted by ndtv.com as saying that 40-50 bodies were seen floating in the Ganges. “Some 40-45 bodies were seen floating,” Kumar, standing at the site of the horror, Mahadeva Ghat in Chausa.

The incident spread panic among the villagers who were terrified that they would get COVID from the bodies. “People are terrified of getting Covid. We have to bury the bodies,” said Narendra Kumar, a villager, the website added

India is currently grappling with a tidal wave of COVID-19 cases with close to 4 lakh cases and 4000 deaths being reported everyday. The ‘Indian variant’, as this mutation is called, is said to be the cause of this fast-spreading wave.