Over 30 die in Haryana village, officials insist only 4 died of Covid-19
Authorities in Rohtak acknowledged that over 30 people died in the Titoli village in just a few days after developing fever while insisting they did not have Covid.
Yoginder, 29, and his brother, Bhupinder, 34, were among the residents of Titoli village in Haryana’s Rohtak district who took ill with Covid-19 symptoms in April. They fell back on faith and started organising havans to ward off the evil that they thought was causing them fever en masse in the absence of any testing facilities. With no respite in sight, a local chemist prescribed Bhupinder paracetamol as his fever worsened. The situation kept getting from bad to worse for him as two residents died on the same day in the village on April 22 after having a fever for over three days. The following day, the brothers went to see Pramod Kumar, a local physician as they also now developed cough and body ache. Kumar too prescribed paracetamol. Over the next few days, over 20 people died in the village and yet there was no testing.
Finally, on April 24, Kumar asked Bhupinder, who was now barely able to walk, to get tested, start taking antibiotics and isolate himself as more people died without getting tested in the village. In the middle of the following night, Bhupinder began gasping for breath and could not walk anymore, setting alarm bells ringing among his family members. Yoginder, who had a mild fever, drove his brother to a hospital in Jhajjar, over 50 km away, where doctors asked them to get tested for Covid before admission. Bhupinder struggled to breathe on the back seat of his car as he had to wait till late afternoon to get tested. As the two were told they would get their reports two days later, Yoginder rushed Bhupinder back to the hospital, where doctors insisted on a Covid positive report to start treating them.
A doctor suggested a nebuliser, but it was not available either in Totoli or Jhajjar before a cousin of theirs managed to borrow it from a friend. Nebuliser brought some relief as Bhupinder could breathe better now but now Yoginder’s condition worsened. A desperate Yoginder drove his brother 124 kilometres to Faridabad as his condition again worsened. A doctor examined Bhupinder and told Yoginder he immediately needed to be put on ventilator support even as no beds were available. They will get a bed if someone dies and vacates one, the brothers were told.
Bhupinder now started turning pale and could not talk anymore even as the family managed to get a five-litre oxygen cylinder, 159 kilometres away in Bhiwani. Midway to Bhiwani, a cousin of Bhupinder and Yoginder joined them with oxygen cans. Bhupinder now began tossing and turning as Yoginder desperately pumped the oxygen. In Bhiwani too, they were unable to find a ventilator bed. Another member of the family rushed back to Faridabad but by the time he reached there, a vacant hospital bed they were promised was occupied by someone else by then. The family was left with no choice but to bring Bhupinder back to their village with two oxygen cylinders. They again began the search for a hospital bed on April 28 and were denied admission to the Jhajjar hospital as Bhupinder’s condition worsened despite getting a high flow of oxygen. He could no longer recognise his brother even as Bhupinder finally managed to get ventilator support at a nearby hospital following the death of a patient. Yoginder, meanwhile, started suffocating. Bhupinder, the father of a 12-year-old daughter, died the following day and Yoginder was now put on the same ventilator support, but he too lost the battle for life three days later.
Authorities in Rohtak acknowledged that over 30 people died in the Titoli village in just a few days after developing fever while insisting they did not have Covid. District information officer Sanjeev Saini said there were just four Covid related deaths in the village as per the chief medical officer’s report even as most people who died never got tested and the village was sealed last week.
Block development officer (Titoli) Raj Pal said the deaths were sudden but largely they included people who were suffering from diabetes and other diseases too. “Though the testing earlier was not much available, after May 1, we have ramped it up in the village,” Pal said. He too maintained just four people have died of Covid in the village of around 12,000 people.
Chandrakant Lahariya, a public health expert, said honest reporting of Covid deaths and cases can make people more cautious and help check of carelessness and thus exposure to the virus. He added the baseline mortality, or the average number of people dying normally in a year is seven in every 1,000 people. “Therefore, in a population of 12,000, there should generally be not more than 84 deaths in a year or seven in a month. However, in the case of Titoli around 30 deaths had taken place in less than a month,” he said. “This is a clear indication that most people have not died a normal death. At a time, when the country is struck with a ravaging pandemic, there is every possibility that these deaths have mostly taken place because of Covid,” Lahariya said.
He added deaths of people under 60 falls under the preventable mortality category. “Many of those lives could have been saved if the disease was diagnosed at an early stage and medical intervention was done,” Lahariya said. “Avoiding or hiding the actual figures does nothing more than worsening the situation.”