THD NewsDesk, Aligarh: Around 35 faculty members have lost their battle to Covid on the campus of Aligarh Muslim University and it’s heartbreaking to see the deserted streets with only the procession of the dead.
The graveyard at AMU is already out of space and now the old graves are being drugged out to make space for the new ones.
Nadeem a local resident said,
“I haven’t seen something like this for decades. I used to come to read fatah (pray) daily, you would see many others praying for their loved ones, but now I come once a week. People are scared. Every day, there are 8-10 burials happening and namaz is read out together.”
The AMU campus has seen more amount of Covid related deaths in the past few weeks than the whole year. The alarming deaths within the teaching fraternity have sent shockwaves leading to apprehensions that a deadlier ‘AMU strain’ of the virus is wreaking havoc.
Proctor Professor Mohammad Waseem Ali said,
“In the past 20 days, we have lost almost 16 members of our faculty, eminent teachers, including the chairman of the medicine department, dean of law faculty and many others. As we come to terms with this loss, there is a sense of fear and restlessness.”
Prof Ali added,
“To see if AMU is dealing with a more virulent strain, Vice-Chancellor Tariq Mansoor has written to the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) so that through genome sequencing all aspects can be studied.”
Aligarh district has witnessed a sharp jump in mortality rate with almost 98 deaths and 19,179 Covid positive cases in the second wave. In fact, between April 2020 and April 2021, there were 58 deaths in the city, but since then deaths have touched 20 in a few weeks.
Prof Waseem also asserted his suspicion that non vaccination is one reason for these fatalities. He confirmed that among the 35 fatalities there were barely any one with even a single dose of the vaccine. In fact some of the ones who got vaccinated got mild symptoms and recovered quickly.
He stated,
“Our vaccination drive has been going on since December. I don’t think any of those who passed away had taken the jab. We did have a professor who had taken the first dose and recovered from Covid very soon.”
Many of the faculty members are at home and have tested positive. They are in isolation and recovering and yet they have to cope up with the online classes. The whole academic community is disturbed when they have to fight the battle for Covid along with continuing the online classes.
An AMU student, Farhan Zuberi said
“We are losing our teachers, you look at the campus, it seems haunted. One cannot believe that Eid is just a few days away. In our teachers, we have lost our guide and guru. My father is also admitted at the JNMC Hospital. It is seeing a shortage of oxygen supply and medicines like Remdisivir. Our VC has flagged the issue that if we are better equipped, we might be able to save more lives.”
Source: India Today
