Tens of millions of desperate migrant workers who were stranded without work or food after the nationwide lockdown took government-provided emergency trains to go back to their home villages. They became the virus trains.
Rita Behera, the widow of Prafulla Behera, with their four daughters on Nov. 10, 2020, in Ganjam, a rural district of India that was untouched by the coronavirus until migrant workers began to return home. Prafulla Behera was Ganjam’s first coronavirus death.
Image: Atul Loke/The New York Times
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