Amravati

The village is in Amravati district in Maharashtra's drought-prone Vidarbha region, which also faces frequent heat waves.

After BBC Marathi published this video, Avishyant Panda - the CEO of the Amravati district council - visited the village and said the administration would increase the frequency of water tankers.

For specialized medical care, she says, locals have to leave the district and travel around three hours in a vehicle to a facility in the nearest city, Amravati.

The variant's first impact was detected months earlier in the Amravati district of the western state of Maharashtra, where health authorities recorded a rapid increase in coronavirus infections in early February, even as cases fell elsewhere in India.

That sense of optimism was sweeping large parts of India, including Amravati, where cases had dropped to a trickle, according to local health officials.