Santosh Singh

A video clip showing a woman lying motionless on the ground at the Muzaffarpur railway station in Bihar, her son playing with the cloth covering her — unaware that his mother had died became an emblem for the trauma faced by lakhs of migrant workers returning home to escape the lockdown distress.

In almost all districts of the state, there is hardly any patient admitted to Level II hospitals, where moderate Covid-19 patients with symptoms of pneumonia have to be treated.

Railways officials said many of them were patients returning home after treatment in other cities.

According to the parents of several students, a major drawback of this model is that it is non-interactive and the content is basic

About 80.53 per cent of the 14,94,071 students who had taken the board exams this year passed. The pass percentage was 80.73 last year, 68.89 in 2018 and 50.12 in 2017.

Asked if the Opposition's response during Covid crisis had been minimal, Kushwaha said it was only because they had to adhere to lockdown norms.

People coming from places other than Surat, Delhi, Pune, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Ghaziabad, Faridabad, Gurgaon, Kolkata, Noida and Bengaluru will be sent for home quarantine, provided they do not have symptoms and monitored.

The Indian Express found in the district that in the precious time the lockdown gave, the local administration cobbled up a basic first line of defence: a swab collection centre, a 100-bed Level-II dedicated facility for moderate cases with pneumonia symptoms, and a Level-I care centre of 200 single rooms in two buildings of a training institute.

Trends of the last three weeks have suggested the highest risk among migrants coming from Delhi, followed by Ahmedabad, Surat and Pune. Of 1,872 cases reported till Thursday noon, about 1,000 were from high-risk towns.

Dhiraj Kumar Mishra has taught at coaching institutes in Kota and Bengaluru. "I had started teaching in Patna, but was not getting a good salary. I left for Kota and started getting paid well. But Covid-19 has changed all calculations."

“From now on, 100 specials trains will run daily to bring back migrants to Bihar. After an agreement between Bihar and the Central government, altogether 800 trains will operate to bring back over 20 lakh migrants,” Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi tweeted.

Amid the lockdown, the Bihar government had decided to accommodate all the returning migrants in quarantine centres.

Pramod Rai, Kamlesh Sahu, Ravi Maurya, Dinesh Kharadi, Ajay Manjhi, Gajraj Yadav, and Abdul Azim are the “luckier” ones, having made their way back to their villages after long journeys. As they rework their budgets and life, what keeps them going is the whiff of their dreams

The high positivity rate among migrant workers is raising concerns in Bihar which is a primary destination state for migrant labour. And when the testing of migrants returning through six inter-state borders, through which about 10,000 are entering each day, is yet to begin.

Bihar has also requested the Centre for raising the state’s borrowing limit under the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act to tide over the financial crisis.

The mukhiya has also made it mandatory for villagers in the panchayat area to wear masks before stepping out.

Over the last few days, about 20,000 migrants have returned every day by trains and by road through the state’s six inter-state borders.

Forty-four migrants from Jharkhand and Bihar are among several others who have been lodged at the quarantine centre in Gopalganj at the double-storey ZA Islamia High School building which can accommodate 100 people.

Delhi government had made an advance payment to the Indian Railways and had written to the Bihar government on Thursday requesting a reimbursement. On Friday, the Delhi government said it was footing the bill for migrant workers headed to states that do not want to pay.