India skyrockets past 14 million Covid-19 cases

NEW DELHI: India reported more than 200,000 new coronavirus cases, skyrocketing past 14 million overall as an intensifying outbreak puts a grim weight on its fragile healthcare system.

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 SK Sarin, a government health expert in New Delhi, yesterday.

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 didn’t stop train and air services.

In recent days, migrant workers hauling backpacks have swarmed overcrowded trains leaving Mumbai, an exodus among panic-stricken day labourers.

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

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.

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.

India is ramping up its vaccination drive. The Health Ministry said the total vaccinations crossed 114 million with over three million doses administered on Wednesday.

Hospitals in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and several other states were overwhelmed with patients with several hospitals reporting a shortage of oxygen.

Cremation and burial grounds in the worst-hit area also were finding it difficult to cope with the increasing number of bodies, Indian media reports said. — AP