Coronavirus | Surat turns Gujarat’s COVID-19 epicentre
The Hindu
Reports suggest the second wave is proving more lethal than the first
With the rise in the number of deaths daily due to COVID-19, Surat has become the coronavirus epicentre in Gujarat. On Tuesday, according to the State Health Department’s bulletin, 22 persons died of COVID-19 in Surat, but local officials and sources claimed the actual number was higher. “It’s mayhem here in the city. The city has never witnessed so many deaths in the last few decades. All crematoria run by the Municipal Corporation, and burial grounds, are working round the clock,” a senior newspaper editor from Surat told The Hindu. He added that the pandemic had become so widespread in the city that it was impossible to find a bed in any hospital, oxygen supply had almost depleted, and there were no ventilators or other necessary medicines like Remdesivir injections.![](/newspic/picid-1269750-20250217064624.jpg)
When fed into Latin, pusilla comes out denoting “very small”. The Baillon’s crake can be missed in the field, when it is at a distance, as the magnification of the human eye is woefully short of what it takes to pick up this tiny creature. The other factor is the Baillon’s crake’s predisposition to present less of itself: it moves about furtively and slides into the reeds at the slightest suspicion of being noticed. But if you are keen on observing the Baillon’s crake or the ruddy breasted crake in the field, in Chennai, this would be the best time to put in efforts towards that end. These birds live amidst reeds, the bulrushes, which are likely to lose their density now as they would shrivel and go brown, leaving wide gaps, thereby reducing the cover for these tiddly birds to stay inscrutable.