Worst is yet to come, experts say, as India reels from deaths amid new wave of infection
Bodies piling up at morgues and desperate patients waiting in ambulances to be treated are the defining images of India’s second wave of Covid-19, but officials say the worst is yet to come.
In February, the number of new daily cases dropped below 9,000 and towns and cities in the world’s second most populous nation were buzzing with life before the resurgence of the virus at the beginning of April.
On Tuesday, India reported more than 185,000 cases and more than 1,000 deaths, days after it again passed Brazil to become the second most affected country after the US, with more than 13.8 million cases and 172,000 deaths.
India now has more than 1.4 million active cases, with tens of thousands being treated in hospital.
Raipur in eastern Chhattisgarh state is now averaging 10,000 cases and more than 100 deaths a day compared with 1,500 cases a day during the peak of the first wave.
Ninety per cent of Covid beds in the city’s biggest government-run hospital, Bhim Rao Ambedkar Memorial, are full.
The hospital is reporting at least 20 deaths a day related to the viral infection.
Its mortuary is full, forcing the authorities to leave bodies wherever they can find some space.
Videos on TV stations and social media showed bodies wrapped in white plastic bags scattered across corridors and in empty rooms. The authorities blamed long waits at crematoriums.
“We are witnessing about 20 deaths per day … a month ago, it was about 20 deaths a month. There is a limitation of space,” Dr Vineet Jain, superintendent of the hospital, told The National.
Some family members are not picking up the bodies for funerals for fear of contracting the coronavirus, he said.
“At present, we have about 40 to 50 bodies waiting for disposal,” Dr Jain said.
In Ahmedabad, the capital of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat, more than 100 ambulances with Covid-19 patients were lined up outside a hospital overnight on Tuesday after the 2,100-bed centre ran out of space, forcing staff to treat them in the parked vehicles.
The situation is exceptionally grim in neighbouring Maharashtra, the state that alone accounts for 48 per cent of the active caseload in India, with more than 550,000 infections.
Intensive care units and oxygen-equipped beds in the state’s hospitals have been at almost 100 per cent occupancy for the past week.
Crematoriums are running out of space because of the rise in Covid-19 deaths, and bodies are being cremated on a single pyre to cope with the surging number of deaths.
At a government-run hospital in the state’s Osmanabad district, videos recorded on mobile phones by the families of Covid-19 patients showed the infected slouched in wheelchairs receiving oxygen and drugs in corridors after the hospital ran out of beds.
State chief minister Uddhav Thackeray appealed to Mr Modi to use Indian Air Force planes to take oxygen to the state after shortages were reported at several hospitals.
The state imposed a 15-day lockdown, including in Mumbai, from Tuesday at midnight.
In New Delhi, 14 private hospitals and six government hospitals were converted into care centres as the city reported more than 13,500 cases a day.
Despite states taking action, the national government hinted that it will not impose a nationwide lockdown to avoid damaging the economy, which has picked up in recent months.
In past weeks, large crowds at election rallies and religious festivals caused concern for experts, who said events could get out of hand in the coming days in the absence of drastic measures to control infection rates.
“I fear that things are going to get worse in the coming weeks,” said Dr Shahid Jameel, a virologist and the director of the Trivedi School of Biosciences at Haryana state’s Ashoka University.