Sweat-soaked doctor who sums up India’s coronavirus agony
EXHAUSTED and drenched in sweat, this doctor shows the desperation facing the medical community battling to stem the Covid wave that is devastating India.
Dr Sohil Makwana posted two images of himself at a hospital in the state of Gujarat – one of him head-to-toe in PPE and another soaked in sweat after he took off the protective covers.
The doctor said he was ‘proud to serve the nation’ as it set another grim global record with 401,993 new cases and 3,523 deaths.
Dr Makwana tweeted: ‘Talking on behalf of all doctors and health workers. We are really working hard away from our family. Sometimes a foot away from positive patient.’
He urged: ‘Please go for vaccination, it’s the only solution. Stay safe.’
Meanwhile, a fire in a Covid ward in a hospital in Gujarat killed 18 people, including two medics. It is the second fatal fire in weeks after 13 people died in a hospital blaze on the outskirts of Mumbai last month.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has described the pandemic as a ‘once-in-a-century crisis’ amid a devastating shortage of oxygen and a crumbling health system. Television images on Friday showed a 33-year-old mother desperately gasping for breath in her car while her family looked for a hospital bed on the outskirts of Delhi.
There was no room at three hospitals and she died in her vehicle that day. A further 12 people died in the same city when a medical facility ran out of oxygen for 80 minutes.
Nearly ten per cent of Indians have received their first vaccine dose but only 1.5 per cent have received both.
Yesterday the nation launched a major inoculation drive and received the first of 125 million doses of the Sputnik V vaccine from Russia amid warnings that it is running out of jabs to give to its younger citizens.
The country of 1.4 billion has asked the UK to help it build its own Nightingale hospitals to treat Covid patients.
Government sources said Indian officials told them ‘they are running out of beds’ and needed assistance, set to be provided by the Army.