India sets global daily record of 332,730 cases
Modi meets chief ministers from worst-hit states; officials issue desperate calls for oxygen; some hospitals closed to new patients
India reported the world’s highest daily tally of coronavirus infections for a second day on Friday, surpassing 330,000 new cases, as it struggles with a health system overwhelmed by patients and plagued by accidents.
Deaths in the past 24 hours also jumped to a record 2,263, the health ministry said, while officials across northern and western India, including the capital, New Delhi, warned most hospitals were full and running out of oxygen.
At least six hospitals ran out of oxygen supplies in the Indian capital late Thursday night before deliveries arrived in the early hours. Medical oxygen tanker trunks have been doing supply runs around the clock in a number of states and air force transport planes have started airliting big oxygen tanks around the country.
The first “oxygen Express” train let the southern industrial hub of Vizag on Thursday headed for Maharashtra with trucks carrying supplies on board. The defence ministry said it would fly in 23 mobile oxygen generation plants from Germany within a week.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose government has been criticised for relaxing virus curbs too quickly, met chief ministers of the worst-affected states. Later he said the government was making a “continuous effort” to increase oxygen supplies, including steps to divert industrial oxygen.
Modi asked states to work together to meet the needs for medicine and oxygen, and stop hoarding and black marketeering. “Every state should ensure that no oxygen tanker, whether it is meant for any state, is stopped or gets stranded,” he was quoted as saying in a statement.
Daily infections hit 332,730, up from 314,835 the previous day, when India set a record that surpassed a US figure of 297,430 new cases set in January. The US tally has since fallen.
Delhi reported more than 26,000 new cases and 306 deaths, or about one fatality every five minutes, the fastest since the pandemic began.
Medical oxygen and beds have become scarce, with major hospitals puting up notices saying they have no room for any more patients and police fanning out to secure oxygen supplies.
“We regret to inform that we are suspending any new patient admissions in all our hospitals in Delhi ... till oxygen supplies stabilise,” Max Healthcare, which runs a network of hospitals, said on Twiter as it appealed for oxygen.
Bhramar Mukherjee, a professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of Michigan in the United States, said it seemed as if there was no social safety net for Indians.
“Everyone is fighting for their own survival and trying to protect their loved ones. This is hard to watch,” he said.
In New Delhi, people losing loved ones are turning to makeshit facilities for mass burials and cremations as funeral services get swamped. Amid the despair, recriminations have begun. Health experts say India got complacent in the winter, when new cases were running at about 10,000 a day and seemed to be under control, and lited restrictions to allow big gatherings.
“Indians let down their collective guard,” Zarir Udwadia, a pulmonologist on Maharashtra’s task force, wrote in the Times of India newspaper. “We heard self-congratulatory declarations of victory from our leaders, now cruelly exposed as mere self-assured hubris.” The government ordered an extensive lockdown last year in the early stages of the pandemic, but it has been wary of the economic costs and upheaval to the lives of legions of poor migrant workers ater any tight reimposition of curbs. Modi has said another lockdown would be a last resort. A more infectious variant of the virus that originated in India may have helped accelerate the surge, experts said.
Britain, Canada, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates have banned flights from India. India, a major vaccine producer, has begun a vaccination campaign but only a tiny fraction of its population of 1.39 billion has received a dose, with experts saying supplies are scarce.
“It is tragic, the mismanagement,” Kaushik Basu, a professor at Cornell University and a former economic adviser to the Indian government, said on Twiter. “For a country known to be the pharmacy of the world, to have less than 1.5% of the population vaccinated is a failure difficult to fathom.”