Indian MP who claimed taking bath in mud prevents Covid, contracts virus

An Indian MP from the northern state of Rajasthan, who filmed himself taking a bath in mud while blowing a conch, claiming that it prevented Covid-19, has tested positive for the disease, Daily Mail reported on Thursday.

According to local media, Sukhbir Singh Jaunapuria was among 24 Members of Indian Parliament who tested positive for the virus on September 14.

Earlier, Singh uploaded a bizarre video to his Facebook page in which he could be seen sitting shirtless in a muddle field, blowing a conch shell.

'Go out, get wet in the rain, sit in the dirt, work on the farm, blow a conch … and eat "desi" things. One gains immunity from doing these things,' he says in Hindi.

The Indian parliament re-opened after six months on Monday, with at least 17 members testing positive.

The news broke as coronavirus infections in India surged past 5 million on Wednesday, piling pressure on hospitals grappling with unreliable supplies of oxygen that they need to treat tens of thousands of critical patients.

The health ministry reported 90,123 new infections on Wednesday, taking the total caseload to 5.02 million.

The death toll from Covid-19 is now at 82,066, the ministry said, with 1,290 fatalities recorded in the previous 24 hours.

India has the world’s fastest growing novel coronavirus epidemic and added its last million infections in just 12 days. It is only the second country in the world to have more than 5 million cases, after the United States.

However, Singh is far from the only prominent politician to propose an odd cure for the virus.

Belarus president Alexsander Lukashenko said earlier this year that riding tractors, drinking vodka and taking saunas would prevent the disease, before testing positive.

In Mexico, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador revealed he was carrying amulets which he said protect him from disease, while Puebla Governor Luis Miguel Barbosa Huerta claimed poor people were immune to the disease.

Suman Haripriya, another Indian lawmaker from the state of Assam, touted the theory that cow urine and dung could be used to sterilise infected areas, while Yogi Adityanath, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, suggested yoga was also a cure.

And US president Donald Trump suggested that scientists should look into whether injecting disinfectant could be a cure for the virus.

At least 6% of India’s nearly 1 million active cases need oxygen support, health ministry official Rajesh Bhushan told reporters. Supplies were adequate but state governments should monitor usage and flag shortages, he said.

In the capital of India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, the total requirement of oxygen cylinders stood at 5,000 cylinders compared with 1,000 cylinders in normal times, a government official said.

Ravindra Khade Patil, a doctor who manages two private hospitals on the outskirts of Mumbai in Maharashtra state, spoke of the stress he faces trying to ensure he can supply his patients with oxygen.

Two days ago, the supplier of oxygen to his hospitals did not turn up at his usual time.

Patil made frantic calls to the supplier and then to nearby hospitals and lawmakers, knowing that if the oxygen did not arrive on time, it would be too late for some of his most critical patients.

Finally, past midnight, thanks to pressure from a government official, the oxygen tanks arrived.

“If they had arrived even a couple of hours late, we could have lost five or six patients. Every day, we are worried if we will be able to meet our requirements, if the oxygen will arrive or not,” Patil told Reuters.