The Navdiya primary health centre in Shahjahanpur district, about 170km west of Lucknow, has no doctor, lab assistant, medicines or Covid testing kits. And no patients, of course.

Another at Ranmandi in Saharanpur, 550km west of Lucknow, has no doctor — not even tables or chairs. But don’t say it is “shut”: its doors too have fallen off.

“Our sole doctor, pharmacist and lab technician were all shifted last month to the Khutar community health centre (CHC), about 20km away. So, our hospital is empty,” Mamta Devi, an auxiliary nurse and midwife at the Navdiya primary health centre (PHC), said.

Neighbouring Mudiya Kurmiyat is luckier. While its lone doctor too was shifted last month to a CHC in Banda, its lab technician is running the outpatient department, handing out paracetamol to people who come with Covid-like symptoms.

None of these PHCs has admitted any patient for months if not years, local people say.

An Uttar Pradesh health department report says 224 of the state’s 2,936 rural PHCs and 43 of its 293 CHCs have no doctor, paramedic or medicines. This, when Covid is ravaging the state’s rural areas. The PHCs are expected to have five to six doctors each and the larger CHCs, about a dozen.

Vinay Dev Sharma, the lab technician at the Mudiya Kurmiyat PHC, said: “Pharmacist Suresh Kumar and I used to give medicines to the patients at the OPD. Now Suresh is on leave and I hand out paracetamol to 15 to 20 patients with Covid-like symptoms every day. We have no kits to test them for Covid. The lone doctor here was sent to the CHC last month.”

Sub-divisional magistrate Satish Chandra said: “The doctors and paramedical staff are travelling door to door to test suspected cases and give them medicine. That’s why the PHCs are vacant.”

But Abhinav Singh, panchayat chief of Mudiya Kurmiyat, confirmed that the lone doctor had been transferred.

“At least 40 people have died in this neighbourhood of 10 villages in the past one month. Nobody has ever visited these villages to test people,” he said.

Health department sources said health centres were vacant because the appointment process was slow and because doctors avoided rural postings. In the past six years, the Uttar Pradesh government has appointed just over 400 doctors.

The Ranmandi PHC, inaugurated in the 1950s by then President Rajendra Prasad, has had just a lab technician and no doctor for a year.

“But even the technician doesn’t report for work because there’s no chair or table in the four-room building, not even a door. It’s become a shelter for stray dogs and cattle,” a villager said.

Veer Singh, a Ranmandi resident, said: “Sixteen people with Covid-like symptoms have died in our village in the last 10 days. We have not seen any doctor or health department official here in the past one year.”

Ambedkar Nagar, 200km east of lucknow, seems to have witnessed a Covid survey for some time. But Ramakant Mishra, a social worker from the district, has written to the state government saying the rapid antigen tests were halted in the villages a fortnight ago while RT-PCR tests were being conducted in limited numbers.

“When the government is sitting idle during the second wave of Covid, what should we expect from it in the third phase?” Mishra said.

Jamal Ahmad, a schoolteacher in Ambedkar Nagar, said: “While dozens are dying every day in rural Ambedkar Nagar, the medical teams are busy in the towns. The government knows that rural people don’t raise a hue and cry over the death of their kin.”

Dr Om Prakash, chief medical superintendent at the Ambedkar Nagar district hospital, said: “We don’t have antigen test kits. We shall start a door-to-door survey as soon we have the kits and medicines.”

Sixty people with Covid-like symptoms have died in the Dulheri, Assa and Akbarpur Sadat villages in Meerut in the past 10 days, sources said.

Dr Ashutosh Kumar, who is in charge of the local CHC, said: “We shall soon organise camps in the villages and start testing people. We are waiting for the kits.”

“When will they start treating us, when all the villagers are dead?” asked Pramod Kumar, a resident of Akbarpur Sadat.

Chief minister Yogi Adityanath has claimed to have deployed 59 nodal officers across the state to contain the spread of the infection in the rural areas.

“The chief minister has asked us to focus on the rural areas. Nodal officers, district magistrates and sectors-in-charge are vigilant. Medical teams are monitoring the situation,” said Awanish Awasthi, additional chief secretary, home department.

Awasthi, claimed there was no shortage of anything in the state’s Covid hospitals.