Indian health service still in dire straits
INDIAN families are being left to ferry people sick with Covid-19 from hospital to hospital in search of treatment as the country suffers a surge in infections with oxygen in short supply.
On social media and in television footage, desperate relatives can be seen pleading for oxygen outside hospitals or weeping in the street for loved ones who have died while waiting for treatment.
One woman mourned the death of her younger brother, aged 50. He was turned away by two hospitals and died waiting to be seen at a third, gasping after his oxygen tank ran out.
She blamed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government for the crisis.
“He has lit funeral pyres in every house,” she said, in a video shot by The Caravan magazine.
On Sunday, for the fourth straight day India set a global daily record of new coronavirus infections, spurred by a new variant. The surge has undermined the government’s premature claims of victory over the pandemic.
The 349,691 new infections brought India’s total to more than 16.9 million, behind only the United States. The health ministry reported another 2,767 deaths in the past 24 hours, pushing India’s fatalities to 192,311.
The death toll could be a huge undercount as suspected cases are not included, and many Covid-19 deaths are being attributed to underlying conditions.
The unfolding crisis is most visceral in India’s overwhelmed graveyards and crematoria, and in images of gasping patients dying on their way to hospitals due to a lack of oxygen.
Burial grounds in the capital New Delhi are running out of space, and bright, glowing funeral pyres light up the night sky in other badly-hit cities.
In the central city of Bhopal, some crematoria have increased their capacity from dozens of pyres to more than 50, yet there are still hours-long waits.
At the city’s Bhadbhada Vishram Ghat crematorium, workers said they cremated more than 110 people on Saturday, even as government figures in the entire city of 1.8 million put the total number of virus deaths at just 10.
“The virus is swallowing our city’s people like a monster,” said Mamtesh Sharma, an official at the site.
The unprecedented rush of bodies has forced the crematorium to skip individual ceremonies and exhaustive rituals that Hindus believe release the soul from the cycle of rebirth.
“We are just burning bodies as they arrive,” said Mr Sharma. “It is as if we are in the middle of a war.”
The situation is equally grim at packed hospitals, where desperate people are dying in queues, sometimes on the roads outside, waiting to see doctors.
Health officials are scrambling to expand critical care units and stock up on dwindling supplies of oxygen. Hospitals and patients alike are struggling to procure scarce medical equipment that is being sold on the black market at an exponential mark-up.