200,000 INFECTIONS IN A SINGLE DAY
Scenes of despair as families of Covid-19 patients scramble for beds, oxygen supplies
India is battling a vicious second Covid wave amid religious festivals and political rallies. A record 200,000 new cases yesterday and nearly two million in April have left cities with few vaccines and fewer hospital beds |
Many Indians scrambled to secure beds in hospitals for relatives stricken with coronavirus as infections surged to a daily record, overwhelming medical facilities and drying up oxygen supplies.
A massive second wave of infections is centred on the rich state of Maharashtra, which makes up a quarter of the tally.
‘Horrible situation’
“The situation is horrible,” said Avinash Gawande, an official of a government hospital in the industrial city of Nagpur that was battling a flood of patients, as were hospitals in neighbouring Gujarat state and Delhi in the north.
“We are a 900-bed hospital, but there are about 60 patients waiting and we don’t have space for them.” Maharashtra, home to the financial capital of Mumbai, began a lockdown at midnight to rein in the spread of disease, a move that spurred a rush to stockpile essential items in advance.
As infections climbed, doctors warned the surge could be deadlier than last year’s.
“This virus is more infectious and virulent...We have 35-year olds with pneumonia in intensive care, which was not happening last year,” said paediatrician Dhiren Gupta, at the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital. “The situation is chaotic.” Outside a city mortuary, weeping relatives gathered in the hot sun to wait for the bodies of loved ones to be released.
Supplies of oxygen, critical to combat breathing difficulties, ran short in places such as Gujarat, the home state of prime minister Narendra Modi.
Ominous warning
“If such conditions persist, the death toll will rise,” the head of a medical body in the state’s industrial city of Ahmedabad told its chief minister in a letter.