After devastating India¡¯s biggest cities, the latest COVID-19 wave is now ravaging rural areas across the world¡¯s second-most populous country. And most villages have no way to fight the virus.
In Basi, about 90 minutes from the capital, New Delhi, about three-quarters of the village¡¯s 5,400 people are sick and more than 30 have died in the past three weeks. It has no health-care facilities, no doctors and no oxygen canisters. And unlike India¡¯s social-media literate urban population, residents can¡¯t appeal on Twitter to an army of strangers willing to help.
¡°Most deaths in the village have been caused because there was no oxygen available,¡± said Sanjeev Kumar, the newly elected head of the farming community. ¡°The sick are being rushed to the district headquarters and those extremely sick patients have to travel about four hours,¡± he said, adding that many don¡¯t make it in time.
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