by Ritesh Shukla
PRAYAGRAJ, India (Reuters) – Hundreds of thousands of Indians gathered on the banks of the Ganges on Friday for an important Hindu religious festival, despite the strong resurgence of the coronavirus pandemic in India for a month.
The Hindus think that an immersion in the waters of the Ganges on January 14, the date of the festival of Makarsankranti, washes them of their sins.
The ceremony takes place this year in a plain resurgence of the COVID-19 pandemic, in particular in the state of West Bengal crossed by the sacred river.
Worshipers also gathered in droves, most without masks or social distancing measures, in the holy city of Prayagraj in the more northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
“I can’t breathe with a mask on,” Ram Phal Tripathi told Reuters, who came every year with his family from his village in Uttar Pradesh to take part in the celebrations.
The number of cases of contamination by SARS-CoV-2 has multiplied by 30 since last month in India, but this wave caused mainly by the Omicron variant has not led to a significant increase in hospitalizations.
However, medical authorities had unsuccessfully called on those in the state of West Bengal to cancel the Makarsankranti festival this year, for fear that it would cause the epidemic to accelerate uncontrollably, as had happened after another festival. Hindu nun last year.
India on Friday reported 264,202 new cases of contamination in 24 hours and 315 deaths linked to COVID-19, for a total of 485,350 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
(Reporting by Ritesh Shukla in Prayagraj, with Subrata Nagchoudhury in Kolkata; writing by Shilpa Jamkhandikar in Mumbai; French version Tangi Salaün, editing by Blandine Hénault)
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