NEW DELHI IN LOCKDOWN AS HOSPITALS FACE SURGE IN CASES
▶ British prime minister cancels trip to India, while in Saudi Arabia infections rise among women
New Delhi imposed a weeklong lockdown last night to help the Indian capital’s healthcare system cope amid a sharp rise in coronavirus cases.
Ambulance crews raced to and from hospitals in search of empty beds at the weekend, while patients gathered outside medical centres, waiting for space. The city of 29 million people has fewer than 100 beds with ventilators, and fewer than 150 beds available for patients needing critical care.
“People keep arriving in an almost collapsing situation,” said Dr Suresh Kumar, who heads Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital. To help mitigate the crisis, India announced that it would soon expand its vaccination campaign to all adults.
The virus is now spreading faster than ever in India, and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson cancelled a trip to the country as the UK imposed a travel ban on most visitors from the South Asian nation.
The long-planned trip would have been Mr Johnson’s first foreign visit since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
Covid-19 cases are also rising in Saudi Arabia, where the health ministry said infections were higher among women because they are less likely to get vaccinated over safety fears.
Nearly 55 per cent of cases reported recently in the kingdom involved women, health ministry spokesman Dr Mohammed Al Abdul Ali said. He said there had been “a surge in the number of women who have been admitted to intensive care units after their conditions turned critical”. Acceptance of the vaccine by women is “below the expected level”.
In the UAE, a study of the Sinopharm vaccine found that it was more than 90 per cent effective at preventing severe cases of Covid-19. The vast majority of those infected after receiving the vaccine suffered only mild symptoms.
A week-long lockdown was set to begin in New Delhi last night as Indian health authorities struggle to contain a surge in Covid-19 cases.
There is a shortage of hospital beds in the city and oxygen supplies are low.
More than 15 million cases of Covid-19 and about 179,000 deaths have been reported in India since the start of the outbreak.
The country reported a record increase in daily infections on Sunday with 275,306 new cases. It was the fifth consecutive day that authorities recorded more than 200,000 infections.
In New Delhi, the worst-hit city in India, 25,500 new cases were reported on Sunday after about a third of people tested for Covid-19 returned a positive result.
“Delhi’s health system is at a tipping point. The Covid-19 situation is pretty critical,” Delhi’s chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said.
“If we don’t impose a lockdown, we will be looking at a bigger disaster.”
He said businesses would be shut and movement in the city, home to more than 20 million people, restricted. The lockdown will be lifted at 5am on April 26.
“The lockdown doesn’t end the pandemic but just slows it. We will use this week-long lockdown to improve our health care,” he said.
The lockdown will ease the strain on a healthcare system that was stretched to the limit, he said.
Mr Kejriwal urged migrant workers to remain in the city.
“This is a small lockdown of six days. These days will be wasted in your travel journey. Stay here,” he said.
Similar measures have been imposed in other parts of India, including the western state of Maharashtra, home to the financial capital Mumbai, and the southern state of Tamil Nadu.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a rally in West Bengal on Saturday.
That night he said “India defeated Covid last year and India can do it again” after an online meeting with health officials.
They spoke of critical shortages of medicine, vaccine doses and other supplies in the country.
There have been concerns that a new Covid-19 variant with a double mutation is fuelling the wave of infection.
“This is a variant of interest we are following,” Maria Van
Kerkhove, the World Health Organisation’s technical lead officer on Covid-19, said last Friday.
“Having two of these mutations, which have been seen in other variants around the world, is concerning.”
She said the variant showed a similarity with mutations that increased transmission.
Vaccines may also be less effective against the strain, she said.
The variant highlights the insidious nature of viruses and threatens the effectiveness of containment measures introduced in India.
In March last year, the country carried out the world’s largest lockdown in an effort to halt the spread of infection and save lives.
India has the highest case tally in the world behind the US.