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Corona victims before being transported:
"Our patients die away"
Photo:
Anupam Nath / AP
It took four months for the virus to reach Ajay Kumar Sinha's clinic.
The beginning of the pandemic was calm, he says.
Then in July things suddenly got serious.
Sinha is 58 years old and works at Nalanda Medical College & Hospital in the city of Patna in northeast India, one of four corona centers for more than two million people.
As is so often the case, the monsoons brought floods to Patna.
The floods flooded the region and the water also entered the hospital.
A cloudy, brackish broth washed over the patients' beds.
At the same time, the number of corona patients increased.
Suddenly the beds weren't enough.
Reports of rejected patients increased;
of people who collapsed dead outside the door of the hospital.
"Crying doctors called me," says Sinha.
"They shouted: People are dying away from us."
Videos from this period show corpses wrapped in blankets and lying for hours in a room with patients.
Families became frightened and abandoned their loved ones.
"The media criticized us for not removing the bodies. We were told that someone would come to cremate them. But no one came."
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