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Harsha Vadlamani

Ashish Satav, left, checks on his 60-year-old patient, who tested positive for COVID-19 at MAHAN Trust's hospital. The plastic sheets are pulled over when Dr. Satav attends his patients to help prevent the only senior doctor handling COVID-19 cases from catching an infection.

Health worker Kalabai Maravi walks door-to-door monitoring and tracking rural villagers for COVID-19 symptoms in Bamhani, deep inside the core zone of the Achanakmar Tiger Reserve in Mungeli, Chhattisgarh, India. Frontline health workers like Maravi are critical in providing healthcare to those affected and controlling the virus’s further spread.

Tendu leaves, used as a wrapper for a local smoking stick, are left to dry on the grounds of a school in Mendrapara in Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh. Foraged from central Indian forests in the summers, the leaves are a major source of income for families, who head into the forests before dawn to pick. Tarachand Yadav, a 30-year-old buyer at the site, mentioned that more leaves are being collected this year as families see the activity as a good escape from the fear of COVID-19 in the villages.

Manohar Patil, 50, holds a sacrificial goat as his daughter and son-in-law offer prayers to it at an ashram run by Bhanlal Jawarkar, 70, right, in Dadida in the Melghat region of Amaravati in Maharashtra. The Mores claimed Jawarkar cured Jamuna More of oral cancer two years ago by prayers after doctors gave up on her. It’s an example of how blind faith practices can override modern medicine in some parts of India.

Medical staff tend to a woman who fainted as she watched a sample being taken from her husband’s nose to test for black fungus (mucormycosis), in the ICU of the Government Medical College Hospital in Ambikapur in Surguja, Chhattisgarh, India.

A technician takes a chest x-ray of a 47-year-old man in the COVID-19 ward at Jan Swasthya Sahyog's hospital in Ganiyari, Chhattisgarh, India.

A COVID-19 testing camp at Primary Health Centre in Khudiya in Mungeli, Chhattisgarh, India. On this day, 12 of 19 samples taken tested positive in a Rapid Antigen Test. The more reliable and accurate RT PCR test is only available at a bigger hospital about 12 miles away.

Ashik Parvez, 28, plays an Islamic prayer on his mobile phone for his father Nabi Khan, 50, who was critically ill in the intensive care unit at the Government Medical College Hospital.

Doctors perform a procedure on a COVID-19-positive two-month-old to drain the pus forming in his knees at Jan Sawasthya Sahyog's hospital.

Shyamkali Baiga and her four children, who have all tested positive for COVID-19, have their temperatures checked by community health worker Savni Baiga in Bahaud in Mungeli, Chhattisgarh. They are all under home quarantine. Half of this village of 400 refuses to get tested or monitored, even though there are 16 active cases.