India in meltdown as virus takes hold
As India battles a catastrophic wave of Covid-19 infections, countries across the world are stepping in to help
PEOPLE begging in the street for oxygen, collapsing and dying on hospital doorsteps because there simply are no beds available. Parking lots being turned into makeshift hospitals to cope with the influx of patients and bodies being burnt in pyres outside crematoriums because facilities are too full of the dead.
The situation in India can be likened to hell on Earth and the world is looking on in horror. The country broke global records by recording daily increases of more than 400 000 Covid-19 infections. Daily deaths are exceeding 3 600 but the official toll is believed to be far higher.
Mutations and variants are adding to the agony, ripping through communities and leaving hundreds of thousands of people gasping for breath.
“The sick can’t get into hospitals, the dead can’t get into crematoria,” says Aatish Taseer, an Indian journalist and novelist. “The atmosphere in my hometown of New Delhi is bordering on apocalyptic.”
Nurses and doctors are working backto-back shifts. Some have relatives in the same hospital but the pressure is so intense they don’t have time to visit them.
India is now the second-most affected country in the world after the US in terms of active cases, tracking upwards of three million.
“The situation is critical,” says a doctor at New Delhi’s Aakash Healthcare Super Speciality Hospital. “The next two weeks are going to be hell.”
Trauma and anguish reign in the vast country of more than 1,3 billion people. There’s fear lurking in every corner and hospital halls are horror shows.
“I’ve never seen so many mortalities in our ICU,” says a doctor working in critical care. “I get maybe 50 calls a day asking for drugs, beds, cylinders. We don’t have anything available and patients are dying.”
Health minister Harsh Vardhan says the country will do everything in its power to curb the storm of infections.
“Air, rail, road and sea, heaven and earth are being moved to overcome challenges thrown up by this wave of Covid19,” he tweeted.
But the government’s promises are being met with scepticism. There have been mounting calls for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to step down.
“It’s his hubris, incompetence and callousness that are largely responsible for this catastrophic second wave,” Taseer says.
THE situation in India seems all the more dire because just a few months ago they were recording low new infection rates and politicians declared the pandemic was contained in the world’s second-most populous country after China.
In January Modi declared that India had beaten the virus following months of lockdowns and restrictions.
The country’s vaccine rollout programme kicked off on 16 January and in the following weeks 2,4 million people had received the jab.
“India has successfully contained the pandemic,” Vardhan declared. He said 146 of India’s 718 districts had had no new cases for a week and 18 districts for two weeks.
Modi described India as “the world’s pharmacy” when he sent the lion’s share of India’s vaccines to 47 countries, including South Africa.
“I have to admit that this is easily one of the most notable acts of benevolence that we’ve seen in the last 100 years,” said Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne.
As a result, restrictions across India were eased and mass gatherings such as in-person election rallies and religious gatherings were permitted.
It wasn’t long before the fairytale turned into full-blown catastrophe.
The West Bengal Assembly elections, which are conducted in eight phases over a period of 34 days, began in late March. On 20 March, a week before the first phase, the eastern Indian state had just 3 380 active cases. By the time voting entered its seventh phase on 26 April, there were 94 949 active cases. In the same period, new cases a day went up from 383 to 15 992.
“As campaigning started with large crowds and people coming in from affected states, cases started shooting up,” says Dr Punyabrata Goon, convenor of the West Bengal Doctors’ Forum.
The Kumbh Mela festival, which kicked off on 11 March, attracts thousands of Hindu devotees who dip themselves in the Ganges River to cleanse them of their sins and bring salvation.
The festival was cancelled last year but authorities said it “wouldn’t have been right” to deprive the people for two years in a row. More than 1 600 cases of Covid were confirmed after the festival – and those people would have returned home and infected others.
“The Kumbh should have been postponed,” says Indian historian Gopal Bhardwaj.
“Kumbh is meant to provide peace to the inner self. How would one find inner peace if your loved one is Covid-infected?”
M ODI ’ S government is scrambling to address this humanitarian crisis. The health ministry says it has the oxygen it needs but excessive demand has resulted in bottlenecks in transporting it. Funds were approved to set up 551 new oxygen generators at hospitals and special trains carrying oxygen were sent to shortage-hit cities.
Critical drugs for treating serious cases, including one called remdesivir, are now a precious commodity. The situation has led India to seek help from the same countries it provided vaccines to. US president Joe Biden said they’d be sending ventilators, test kits and PPE.
“Just as India sent assistance to the US as our hospitals were strained early in the pandemic, we’re determined to help India in its time of need,” he tweeted.
The UK, European Union, and even Pakistan have promised to send supplies.
Calls for Modi’s resignation are growing louder, but Taseer says political instability is the last thing the country needs.
“India will keep a long painful vigil even as cremation, the rite by which the soul is released through fire of its mortal envelope, becomes a luxury.
“Everyone is praying for someone.”
‘THE ATMOSPHERE IN MY HOMETOWN OF NEW DELHI IS BORDERING ON APOCALYPTIC’