Indian hospitals plead for oxygen; submit national plan, SC tells Modi

NEW DELHI: India put oxygen tankers on special express trains as major hospitals in New Delhi begged on social media on Friday for more supplies to save COVID-19 patients who are struggling to breathe. More than a dozen people died when an oxygen-fed fire ripped through a coronavirus ward in a populous western state.

India’s underfunded health system is tatering as the world’s worst coronavirus surge wears out the nation, which set a global record in daily infections for a second straight day with 332,730.

Over three million dead: At least 3,073,969 people have died of COVID-19 around the world since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP.

UAE cases: The UAE Ministry of Health and Prevention (MOHAP) on Friday reported1,973 new coronavirus cases and two deaths.

MOHAP noted that an additional 1,744 individuals had fully recovered from COVID-19.

The UAE Ministry of Health also announced that 105,443 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine were given in the past 24 hours. The total number of doses provided up to Friday stands at 10,106,684 with a rate of vaccine distribution of 102.19 doses per 100 people.

Flight ban: With worries about the strain rising, Canada suspends all passenger flights from India and Pakistan for 30 days.

India has confirmed 16 million cases so far, second only to the United States in a country of nearly 1.4 billion people. India has recorded 2,263 deaths in the past 24 hours for a total of 186,920. The fire in a hospital intensive care unit killed 13 COVID-19 patients in the Virar area on the outskirts of Mumbai early Friday.

In Washington, health officials and a White House spokeswoman on Friday said they were weighing how to help India and had been in contact with officials there, but gave no details on any possible US action. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that he was looking at what he could do to help India, where the coronavirus pandemic is entering a deadly new phase with which its health services are struggling to cope.

“We’re looking at what we can do to help and support the people of India,” Johnson told British media on Friday, describing India as a great partner and explaining that the help could include providing ventilators or therapeutics.

$19 billion appeal: World leaders demand $19 billion of investment in weapons to beat the COVID-19 pandemic, one year on from the launch of the Access to Covid Tools (ACT) Accelerator, a multi-billion-dollar internationally-coordinated atempt to find vaccines, tests and treatments.

The New Delhi government issued a list of a dozen government and private hospitals facing an acute shortage of oxygen. At another hospital in the capital, questions were raised about whether low oxygen supplies had caused deaths.

The Press Trust of India news agency reported that 25 COVID-19 patients had died at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in the past 24 hours and the lives of another 60 were at risk amid a serious oxygen supply crisis. It quoted unidentified officials as saying “low pressure oxygen” could be the cause of their deaths.

The situation is worsening by the day with hospitals taking to social media to plead with the government to replenish their oxygen supplies and threatening to stop admissions of new patients. A major private hospital chain in the capital, Max Hospital, tweeted that one of its facilities had one hour’s oxygen supply in its system and had been waiting for replenishment since early morning. Two days earlier, they had filed a petition in the Delhi High Court saying they were running out of oxygen, endangering the lives of 400 patients, of which 262 were being treated for COVID-19.

The Supreme Court told Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government on Thursday that it wanted a “national plan” for the supply of oxygen and essential drugs for the treatment of coronavirus patients.

The Press Trust of India news agency said the Defence Ministry will fly 23 mobile oxygen generating plants from Germany to help with the shortage. Each plant will be able to produce 2,400 liters of oxygen per hour, it said.

Army called out to ensure SOPS: Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Friday that the Pakistan army has been requested to help the law enforcement agencies implement COVID-19 standard operating procedure (SOPS) across the country.

Ater a meeting of the National Command and Operation Centre ( NCOC) that reviewed the overall pandemic situation in Pakistan, he appealed to the nation to follow precautions, warning they would soon be facing a situation like India if they continued on the same trajectory.

However, Imran deferred imposing complete lockdown in major cities, which have been hit by the COVID-19 severely.

Tokyo emergency: Japan calls a new state of emergency in Tokyo and three other regions as the country batles rising infections just three months before the Olympics.

EU vaccine optimism: The EU coronavirus vaccine programme will secure enough doses to immunise 70 percent of adults by the end of July, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen says.