Guards armed with rifles escort Dr Kumar Gaurav as he makes the rounds at his hospital on the banks of the Ganges River.

The guards are there to protect him from the relatives of patients, including those suffering from Covid-19. The relatives keep barging into the wards, even the ICU, to stroke and feed their loved ones, often without wearing even the flimsiest of masks as barriers against the novel coronavirus.

“If we stop them, they get angry,” he says. “They want to give homemade meals to their patients, and some even want to massage their patients. And they are taking the infections from our ICUs to the other people in the society.”

He stops to tell the wife of a patient in the ICU she must leave. She obeys, only to return after a few minutes from another entrance.

It’s the monsoon season, and the humidity is reaching unbearable levels. But the few air conditioners in the hospital aren’t working, and some relatives use hand fans to keep their loved ones cool in wards dirty with garbage and discarded protective equipment.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this for Kumar...