Virus bringing India’ s public health services to the brink of collapse

In a case of contrasting worlds in the fight against coronavirus, Scotland reported one death yesterday, while India went beyond 200,000 cases in a single day.

In the past 24 hours, Scotland has also recorded 237 positive tests.

It brings the death toll under this measure – of people who first tested positive for the virus within the previous 28 days – to 7,637.

But India’s latest statistic showed the country continues to struggle to get the virus under control, with health services near collapse.

The Scottish Government figures show 222,897 people have tested positive since the start of the outbreak, up from 222,660 on Wednesday.

The daily test positivity rate is 1.2%, down from 1.3% a day before.

There are now 115 people in hospital confirmed to have the virus, down four in 24 hours, and of these, 16 patients are in intensive care – also down four.

A total of 2,708,691 people have received their first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine and 661,975 have had their second.

It comes after the latest figures from the National Records of Scotland (NRS) officially put the death toll above 10,000.

There were 34 deaths relating to Covid-19 registered between April 5 and 11, which brought the total number of fatalities up to Sunday to 10,031.

Monthly analysis from the NRS also suggests March 2021 was the first month since October 2020 where Covid-19 was not the top cause of death, but the fifth.

However in sharp contrast to Scotland, India’s reporting of more than 200,000 new cases in one day saw it skyrocket past 14 million overall as an intensifying outbreak puts weight on its fragile health care system.

India’s total cases are second behind the United States and its deaths are fourth behind the US, Brazil and Mexico.

The actual numbers may be much higher, with limited testing among India’s nearly 1.4 billion people.

The country is ramping up its vaccination drive, with the health ministry saying more than 114 million vaccinations administered in total, with three million administered on Wednesday.

In the capital, New Delhi, more than a dozen hotels and wedding banquet halls were ordered to be converted into Covid-19 centres attached to hospitals. “The surge is alarming,” said S.K. Sarin, a government health expert in New Delhi.

The bustle of India’s biggest city and financial capital, Mumbai, ebbed under lockdown-like curbs to curb the spread of the virus.

The action imposed by worst-hit Maharashtra state on Wednesday night closed most industries, businesses and public places and limits the movement of people for 15 days, but did not stop train and air services.

In recent days, migrant workers have swarmed overcrowded trains leaving

Mumbai, an exodus among panic-stricken day labourers.

In addition to the 200,739 new cases of infection, the country’s health ministry has also reported 1,038 fatalities from Covid-19 in the past 24 hours, taking deaths to 173,123 since the pandemic started last year.

Shahid Jamil, a virologist, said the recent local and state elections, with massive political rallies and a major Hindu festival with hundreds of thousands of devotees bathing in the Ganges river in the northern city of Haridwar were super-spreader events.

HEALTH CRISIS: A woman waiting in line to vote in elections in India, which a leading virologist has claimed to be a superspreader event in a country that has recorded more than 14 million cases and more than 173,000 deaths.