Kumbh Mela: How a superspreader festival seeded COVID-19 across India
Millions of Hindu pilgrims came from around the country to take a ritual dip in the Ganges River,
then returned home carrying COVID-19. These are their stories
By Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Aakash Hassan / The Guardian, Delhi, India
On April 12, as India registered another 169,000 new COVID-19 cases to overtake Brazil as the second-worst hit country, 3 million people gathered on the shores of the Ganges River.
They were there, in the ancient city of Haridwar in the state of Uttarakhand, to take a ritual dip in the holy river. The bodies, squashed together in a pack of devotion and religious fervor, paid no visible heed to COVID-19 protocols.