Four-Day-Old Decomposing Body Of Mom, Son Found In Their Home Amid COVID-19 Lockdown

The decomposing bodies of a mother and son were found in their home in the Jalalabad district of Uttar Pradesh on Wednesday, local authorities confirmed.

Shakuntala, 70, and her son, Mahendra Vikram, 45 were found dead, with their bodies lying in different cots inside their home in Chak Chandrasenpur village, The Times of India reported.

Police Superintendent Sanjeev Bajpai said the house was closed for the past few days and due to the lockdown imposed to curb the COVID-19 crisis, nobody had visited and attended to the duo. Authorities believe the bodies may have been decaying for four days before being discovered.

Local authorities were informed on Wednesday that one of their neighbors noticed the bodies from his roof. The remains have been taken in for a post-mortem examination by the police, while three teams were formed to investigate the incident.

As of the writing, India had surpassed 23,000,000 confirmed cases with 258,351 deaths.

A massive second wave was started and spurred in February this year by new highly infectious variants of the novel coronavirus, leading to overwhelmed hospitals, as well as over-capacitated crematoriums and mortuaries, Reuters reported.

The Ministry of Health in India recently reported that infections rose by 348,421 and deaths grew by a record of 4,205 in a single day in May – the deadliest 24 hours since the pandemic began.

Delhi's Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia told reporters that people are in peril of dying in the same way if the third and fourth waves hit and the country remains short on vaccines.

Global concern has been raised as there is a lack of beds, drugs, and oxygen in many hospitals in India, leading them to reject admission for hundreds of patients every day.

Makeshift crematoriums have burnt remains in city parking lots and open community spaces, as "bodies have washed up on the banks of the holy river Ganges, immersed by relatives whose villages were stripped bare of the wood needed for cremations," Reuters reported.

However, virologist Shahid Jameel said India now seems to be plateauing at around 400,000 cases a day, according to the Indian Express.

"It is still too early to say whether we have reached the peak,” he said.

Only 2.5 percent of the population in India has been fully vaccinated. The country is predominantly using AstraZeneca vaccines produced at the Serum Institute in the western city of Pune and Covaxin made by Bharat Biotech.