Ferocious wave overwhelms hospitals as states run out of vaccines
STATES RUN OUT OF VACCINES AMID RELENTLESS SURGE
India is facing an escalating health crisis, with its second wave of virus infections hitting record highs, overwhelming hospitals around the country as supplies of intensive care beds and vital drugs come under pressure.
Across the South Asian nation, from the wealthiest and also the worst-hit state of Maharashtra to its most populous, Uttar Pradesh, reports are emerging of hospital beds running short and immunisation centres turning away people as they run out of vaccines. India reported more than 131,000 new infections on Friday, and with over 13 million virus cases lags behind only the US and Brazil.
On Wednesday Maharashtra’s health minister Rajesh Tope said the state had about three days worth of shots in stocks and vaccination centers across the state were being forced to shut down. The state capital Mumbai has also currently used up all but 3 three per cent of its intensive care hospital beds.
India’s capital New Delhi on Friday reported more than 8,500 new infections, the highest so far in this year, with health care workers some of the worst affected. At Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, one of the city’s top institutions, 37 doctors had been infected with Covid-19 with mostly mild symptoms.
In Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh’s capital, as many as 40 doctors at the state-run in King Georges’ Medical University College have been infected, according to two people with knowledge of the situation.
‘10 times worse than 2020’
“It’s going to be a horrible next two months,” said Shuchin Bajaj, a director at the Ujala Cygnus Group of Hospitals, which runs 14 hospitals across north India. “The impact is ten times what it was last year. This time it seems to be affecting younger patients.”
A state-run Mumbai hospital had run out of ICU and oxygen beds, a doctor who asked not to be identified due to the sensitive nature of the information said, adding the new surge in infections was bringing larger numbers of daily patients than the country’s first wave.
There were also reports of shortages of Remdesivir, a broad spectrum anti-viral medication used to treat Covid-19, Bajaj said, adding that getting supplies of the drug was becoming difficult at his hospitals.
Last month India paused exports of Covid-19 vaccines to focus on its domestic requirement, a blow to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s much-touted vaccine diplomacy efforts.
The twelve-fold jump in India’s daily new infections, from some 11,000 in early February, comes as five Indian states are in the middle of conducting local elections and northern Uttarakhand is holding the monthlong Kumbh Mela, a pilgrimage that is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of devotees to the banks of the Ganges river.
“The second wave is bigger and nastier than the first wave, but we have lost our coordinates to politics,” said Kunal Sarkar, a cardiologist at the Medica Super Specialty Hospital in Kolkata, West Bengal.