VIRUS RAGES IN INDIA

The body of a COVID-19 victim is brought to a crematorium site Monday in Delhi, India. On Tuesday, India reported 323,144 new infections, and another 2,771 deaths in the past 24 hours, with 115 Indians succumbing to the disease every hour.

Since the beginning of the week, Dr. Siddharth Tara, a postgraduate medical student at New Delhi’s government-run Hindu Rao Hospital, has had a fever and persistent headache. He took a COVID-19 test, but the results have been delayed as the country’s health system implodes.

His hospital, overburdened and understaffed, wants him to keep working until the testing laboratory confirms he has COVID-19.

On Tuesday, India reported 323,144 new infections for a total of more than 17.6 million cases, behind only the United States. India’s Health Ministry also reported another 2,771 deaths in the past 24 hours, with 115 Indians succumbing to the disease every hour. Experts say those figures are likely an undercount.

“I am not able to breathe. In fact, I’m more symptomatic than my patients. So how can they make me work?” Tara asked.

The challenges facing India today, as cases rise faster than anywhere else in the world, are being compounded by the fragility of its health system and its doctors.

There are 541 medical colleges in India with 36,000 post-graduate medical students, and according to doctors’ unions they constitute the majority at any government hospital — they are the bulwark of the India’s COVID-19 response. But for more than a year, they have been subjected to mammoth workloads, lack of pay, rampant exposure to the virus and complete academic neglect.

“We’re cannon fodder, that’s all,” Tara said.

In five states that are being hit hardest by the surge, postgraduate doctors have held protests against what they view as administrators’ callous attitudes toward students such as them, who urged authorities to prepare for a second wave but were ignored.

Jignesh Gengadiya, a 26-year-old postgraduate medical student, knew he’d be working 24 hours a day, seven days a week when he signed up for a residency at the Government Medical College in the city of Surat in Gujarat state. What he didn’t expect was to be the only doctor taking care of 60 patients in normal circumstances, and 20 patients on duty in the intensive care unit.

“ICU patients require constant attention. If more than one patient starts collapsing, who do I attend to?” Gengadiya asked.

Hindu Rao Hospital, where Tara works, provides a snapshot of the country’s dire situation. It has increased beds for virus patients, but it hasn’t hired any additional doctors, quadrupling the workload, Tara said. To make matters worse, senior doctors are refusing to treat virus patients.

Dr. Subarna Sarkar says she feels betrayed by how her hospital in the city of Pune was caught completely off guard.

“Why weren’t more people hired? Why wasn’t infrastructure ramped up? It’s like we learnt nothing from the first wave,” she said.