World rushes virus supplies as India reels
Nation’s new infections hit global record for a 4th day
The U.S. pledged immediate medical aid to India on Sunday to help combat its surge in coronavirus cases as the nation set a global daily record of new coronavirus infections for the fourth straight day.
The National Security Council said the United States would provide vaccine materials, drugs, test kits, ventilators and personal protective equipment, and was “pursuing options to provide oxygen generation and related supplies on an urgent basis.”
“Just as India sent assistance to the United States as our hospitals were strained early in the pandemic, the United States is determined to help India in its time of need,” President Joe Biden tweeted Sunday.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement Sunday evening that the department is “currently assessing the equipment we can both procure and draw from our own inventory in
the coming days and weeks” to help India’s health care workers. He added that the department will assist with delivering supplies, including “oxygen-related equipment,” to India.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, delivering his monthly radio address Sunday, urged people to get vaccinated because the devastating new wave of infections threatened to overwhelm the nation’s health services. Meanwhile, details emerged of the government’s efforts to block criticism of its response to the outbreak.
India weathered a surge in September that approached nearly 100,000 new infections a day, then numbers dropped significantly, creating the impression that the country was defeating the virus.
The number of new cases has exploded to new highs since last month, topping 300,000 each of the past four days. Sunday’s count of 349,691 new cases in the previous 24 hours was the most for any country in a 24-hour period. The 2,767 deaths reported Sunday was a new high for India.
Experts caution that the figures are underreported in the nation of more than 1.3 billion people.
Analysts blame the surge on the arrival of new coronavirus variants in a country that had settled into a degree of complacency, lifted restrictions and returned to old habits.
“Covid is testing our patience and capacity to bear pain,” Modi said Sunday. “After successful tackling the first wave, the nation’s morale was high. However, this storm has shaken the nation.”
Calls for the United States to provide more help have mounted in recent weeks. The head of India’s largest vaccine manufacturer this month asked the U.S. to lift a ban on exporting raw materials for vaccines.
The White House said national security adviser Jake Sullivan spoke by phone Sunday with his Indian counterpart, Ajit Doval, and that the U.S. is ”working around the clock” to send supplies.
The U.S. Development Finance Corp. is funding a “substantial expansion” in manufacturing capability to enable the Indian vaccine manufacturer Biological E to produce at least 1 billion vaccine doses by the end of 2022, she said, and the government is deploying a team of public health experts to work with Indian authorities.
Anthony Fauci, Biden’s chief medical adviser, said Sunday that “we really need to do more.”
“I don’t think we can walk away from that,” Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told George Stephanopolous on ABC’s “This Week” before the National Security Council announcement.
Biden and his top advisers have been cautious when publicly discussing the prospects of helping other countries bolster their vaccine supplies. They have sought to show a sensitivity to urgent needs abroad while emphasizing that the president’s principal goal is to ensure that Americans have the vaccines they need.
After a speech last week on the state of U.S. vaccination efforts, the president said he hoped to be helpful around the world but stopped short of specific promises.
“It’s in process,” he said. “We don’t have enough to be confident to give it — send it abroad now. But I expect we’re going to be able to do that.”
While Biden is under growing pressure to provide vaccine doses, he has sought to underscore other ways the United States has helped, even as it may fall short of what some have demanded.
“We’re looking at what is going to be done with some of the vaccines that we are not using,” Biden said. “We’re going to make sure they are safe to be sent, and we hope to be able to be of some help and value to countries around the world.”
In a sign of the growing pressure Biden faces from within his own party, Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., the vice chair of the Congressional India Caucus, applauded the administration’s announcement Sunday but added in a statement: “The Biden Administration can still do more, like give India our stockpile of AstraZeneca vaccines that won’t be used in the U.S. and have already opened up to Mexico and Canada. And we should facilitate the Indian diaspora in America to help assist hospitals in India.”
European Union Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen tweeted Sunday that the bloc was “pooling resources” to respond rapidly to an Indian request for help. Janez Lenarcic, European commissioner for crisis management, wrote that the European Union was coordinating with member states to provide oxygen and medicine.
Many countries have provided aid. Singapore sent oxygen containers to India on Saturday. Germany was airlifting 23 mobile oxygen-generation plants.
India worked with private companies to ship 80 metric tons of liquid oxygen from Saudi Arabia, the Indian Embassy in Riyadh announced Saturday. China and Russia have offered help. And Pakistan is ready to give ventilators, digital X-ray machines, protective equipment and other supplies to India, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi tweeted Sunday.
‘LIKE A MONSTER’
Despite the help from other counties, the latest coronavirus surge has devastated India’s health infrastructure.
With life-saving oxygen in short supply, family members in India are left on their own to ferry coronavirus patients from hospital to hospital in search of treatment as the country is engulfed in a devastating new surge of infections. Too often their efforts end in mourning.
One woman mourned the death of her younger brother, aged 50. He was turned away by two hospitals and died waiting to be seen at a third, gasping after his oxygen tank ran out and no replacements were to be had.
She blamed Modi’s government for the crisis.
“He has lit funeral pyres in every house,” she said in a video shot by India’s weekly magazine The Caravan.
The drama is in direct contrast with government claims that “nobody in the country was left without oxygen,” in a statement made Saturday by Indian Solicitor General Tushar Mehta before the Delhi High Court.
The breakdown is a stark failure for a country whose prime minister only in January had declared victory over covid-19, and which boasted of being the “world’s pharmacy,” a global producer of vaccines and a model for other developing nations.
In his Sunday radio address, Modispoke with a doctor from Mumbai, Shashank Joshi, who suggested that the surge was manageable and urged against panic.
“The second wave came very fast. It is spreading faster,” the physician said. “But the recovery rate is also faster. In this phase, young people and children are also being infected.”
Cities are reporting high positive rates for coronavirus tests. In Delhi, 1 in 3 people tested are positive; in the eastern city of Kolkata, it’s 1 in 2.
On Sunday, the Health Ministry said more than 140 million vaccine doses had been administered in 99 days. Modi said anyone older than 18 will be eligible for the vaccine starting May 1.
The crisis is most visceral in India’s overwhelmed graveyards and crematoriums. Burial grounds in the capital of New Delhi are running out of space. Bright, glowing funeral pyres light up the night sky in other badly hit cities.
In the central city of Bhopal, some crematoriums have increased their capacity from dozens of pyres to more than 50. Yet officials say there are still hourslong waits.
At the city’s Bhadbhada Vishram Ghat crematorium, workers said they cremated more than 110 people Saturday, even as government figures in the entire city of 1.8 million put the total number of virus deaths at just 10.
“The virus is swallowing our city’s people like a monster,” said Mamtesh Sharma, an official at the site.
The unprecedented rush of bodies has forced the crematorium to skip individual ceremonies and exhaustive rituals that Hindus believe release the soul from the cycle of rebirth.
“We are just burning bodies as they arrive,” said Sharma.
“It is as if we are in the middle of a war.”
The head gravedigger at New Delhi’s largest Muslim cemetery, where 1,000 people have been buried during the pandemic, said more bodies are arriving now than last year. “I fear we will run out of space very soon,” said Mohammad Shameem.
CRITICISM UNWELCOME
With the death toll mounting, Modi’s Hindu nationalist government has moved to silence critics on social media, according to documents published by the Lumen Database, a transparency initiative run by Harvard University.
The documents show that officials filed requests Thursday and Friday for Twitter to remove 52 tweets, citing India’s Information Technology Act of 2000. The move was first reported by Indian news site MediaNama, which said users in India could no longer access the tweets.
Some of the tweets appeared to include false information about the virus, but many were critical of the government. One by actor Vineet Kumar Singh called attention to test shortages. Another by West Bengal Minister Moloy Ghatak juxtaposed photos of mass cremations with images of Modi speaking and a large crowd with the caption, “When death bodies were burning, Nero was busy doing election rallies.”
“India will never forgive PM narendramodi for underplaying the corona situation in the country and letting so many people die due to mismanagement,” the tweet said.
Among the users whose tweets the government asked Twitter to block were a member of parliament and journalists.
“When we receive a valid legal request, we review it under both the Twitter rules and local law,” a Twitter spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement Sunday. “If the content violates Twitter’s Rules, the content will be removed from the service. If it is determined to be illegal in a particular jurisdiction, but not in violation of the Twitter rules, we may withhold access to the content in India only.”
In all cases, the spokesperson wrote, Twitter notifies the account holder directly so they’re aware that it has received a legal order.”
India’s Information Technology Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
On Sunday, Pawan Khera, national spokesman for the Indian National Congress, the country’s largest opposition party, filed a legal notice against India’s information technology minister, arguing that censorship of his tweet questioning a government decision to allow mass gatherings was “an abuse of regulatory power” and unconstitutional.