Worst yet to come as India braces for 500,000 cases a day
India’s deepening coronavirus crisis may have another two weeks to run before a predicted peak of half a million cases a day, a senior virologist said yesterday.
‘‘That’s what some virus models suggest,’’ said Shahid Jameel, director of biosciences at Ashoka University near Delhi. Infections shot past 340,000, the highest rate in the world for the third consecutive day, amid chaotic, harrowing scenes in hospitals.
After a relatively benign first wave of the pandemic last year, India has been hit thismonth by a brutal second wave that is overwhelming its health system.
‘‘You will find two, sometimes three patients in one bed in some government hospitals,’’ Jameel said.
‘‘I’ve never ever seen anything like this.’’
A shortage of oxygen – crucial to the survival of patients with severe Covid-19 – has pushed up prices.
‘‘Healthcare is free in a government hospital, but often they will not have all the medicines that you need, so you will have to go and buy them outside,’’ Jameel said
Private hospitals were overflowing too, he said, as wellconnected patients gained admission with only a mild case of the disease.
‘‘They are using hospital beds as a precautionary measure in case they need them in the future, putting more strain on the system and putting themselves at risk of further infection.’’
The government ramped up its efforts to get medical oxygen to hospitals using special Oxygen Express trains, air force planes and trucks to transport tankers, and took measures to exempt critical oxygen supplies from customs taxes.
But the crisis in the country of nearly 1.4 billion people was only deepening as overburdened hospitals shut admissions and ran out of beds and oxygen supplies.
Health experts and critics say a downward trend in infections late last year lulled authorities into complacency, as they failed to plug the holes in the ailing health care system that had become evident during the first wave. They also blame politicians and government authorities for allowing super-spreader events, including religious festivals and election rallies, to take place as recently as this month.
‘‘It’s not the virus variants and mutations which are a key cause of the current rise in infections,’’ Dr Anant Bhan, a bioethics and global health expert, tweeted this week.
‘‘It’s the variants of ineptitude and abdication of public health thinking by our decision makers.’’