EVERY MORNING, JITENDRA SHINDE, an autorickshaw driver in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, dons a full-body PPE suit, double mask, rubber gloves and a face shield before heading out for the day. It is not just because the city and the district named after it are literally the epicentre of the Covid-19 pandemic, but because at 3.4 per cent, Kolhapur’s Covid fatality rate (CFR) is more than double that of Maharashtra’s 1.3 per cent CFR. The city, a district capital with a census population of 789,000, is 374 kilometres south-east of Mumbai, close to Maharashtra’s border with Karnataka.
Shinde transports as many as 15 Covid-19 patients each day to the city’s rapidly filling hospitals and has, till now, ferried over 1,000 patients. The 59-year-old, who offers this service free of cost, has been…