theguardian.com India hits global record of 315,000 new daily cases as Covid wave worsens Rebecca Ratcliffe India has registered a record-breaking single-day tally of new Covid cases as a severe shortages of beds and oxygen hit Delhi hospitals and migrant workers made an exodus from the capital. Its total of 314,835 cases over the previous 24 hours is the highest number of infections recorded in a day in any country since the start of the pandemic. The unprecedented spread of the virus, blamed on a more contagious strain as well as lax safety measures, has pushed hospitals to the brink. Social media are flooded with desperate pleas from people whose relatives are sick but have been repeatedly turned away from wards. “We as the doctor, we the hospital, we are supposed to give life,” said Sunil Saggar, the chief executive of Shanti Mukand hospital in Delhi, breaking down as he spoke to local media. “If we cannot give them oxygen even, what is the situation? The patient will die.” Outside his hospital a sign read: “We regret we are stopping admission in hospital because oxygen supply are not coming.” Delhi’s deputy chief minister, Manish Sisodia, accused neighbouring states of blocking oxygen supplies from reaching the city, and warned in a televised address: “It might become difficult for hospitals here to save lives.” In Maharashtra state in western India, at least 24 Covid patients died on Wednesday when the oxygen supply to their ventilators ran out due to a leak. The state, which accounted for the majority of new cases announced on Thursday, tightened its lockdown late on Wednesday night, stating that travel by private vehicles would be permitted only for medical emergencies, and that only health workers and government employees may use the train system. “Covid-19 has become a public health crisis in India leading to a collapse of the healthcare system,” Krutika Kuppalli, an assistant professor at the division of infectious diseases at the Medical University of South Carolina in the US, said on Twitter. A total of 2,104 deaths were registered on Wednesday, a record high for India, which has overwhelmed crematoriums. One crematorium east of Delhi was forced to build funeral pyres in its parking lot to cope with demand. Delhi’s migrant workers, who fear a prolonged lockdown in which they are left stranded with no income, are leaving en masse, despite reassurances by the city’s chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, earlier in the week, who pleaded for them to stay. “We did not want to get caught in the lockdown of Delhi like last time. If we were afraid of corona and stayed in Delhi, then I believe our family would have died of debt and hunger,” said Pooja Kumari, 30, who was travelling with her family back to her home village in Muzaffarpur, Bihar. Unlike last year when train and bus services were suspended, forcing millions of people to walk for days to reach their home villages, transport is still running. Campaigners say bus services are struggling to cope with the exodus, however, and ticket prices have rocketed. On Tuesday an overcrowded bus that was carrying migrant workers from Delhi to Madhya Pradesh overturned in Gwalior, killing three people and injuring 12. “Anyone who goes to these major bus terminals or railway stations will have a picture of the degree of strandedness that there is,” said Shreya Ghosh, of the Migrant Workers Solidarity Network (MWSN). Migrant workers feared losing their livelihoods and being unable to cover the cost of rent and food in big cities, said Richa Prasant, the founder of the Sunaayy Foundation, which supports migrant workers. “They also feel if there is an issue in the healthcare system then priority won’t be on them. At least [in their home areas] they have a support system.” Prior to Thursday, the record for the highest number of daily cases registered anywhere in the world was 300,310, set by the US on 2 January. Since the start of the pandemic, India has recorded 15.93m cases, including more than 1m in the past four days. “We never thought a second wave would hit us so hard,” Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, the executive chairman of Biocon & Biocon Biologics, an Indian healthcare firm, wrote in the Economic Times. “Complacency led to unanticipated shortages of medicines, medical supplies and hospital beds.” Health experts say the country relaxed safety measures too quickly, wrongly assuming the virus had disappeared. Weddings and huge festivals were allowed to go ahead, while Modi addressed packed political rallies for local elections. India has so far administered nearly 130m doses of vaccine, the most in the world after the US and China. Yet, with a population of 1.38 billion, this still means only 8% of people have received at least one vaccine. The government had planned to offer vaccines, currently available to frontline workers and people aged over 45, to all adults from next month. However, supplies are running low in many states, and the Serum Institute of India, which manufactures the AstraZeneca vaccine, has downgraded its production forecasts. It had planned to raise its monthly output to 100m doses from the current 60m-70m late in May, but now expects this will not be possible until July.
news.trust.org 'Beg, borrow, steal': the fight for oxygen at New Delhi hospitals Thomson Reuters Foundation Medical staff are facing life-or-death scrambles to get scarce oxygen supplies as COVID-19 cases surge * India's capital city faces acute oxygen shortages * Indian court intervenes, criticises authorities for lax planning * Even top hospitals have only limited oxygen supplies * Federal government says trying its best to ensure availability By Devjyot Ghoshal and Aditya Kalra NEW DELHI, April 22 (Reuters) - Pankaj Solanki, a doctor and the director of a small hospital in New Delhi, rushed to an oxygen vendor earlier this week to secure enough cylinders to keep 10 COVID-19 patients on the ICU ward breathing. His supplies would only last until Thursday night, and so he has sent a driver out to try to find more. "It is mental agony. I can't bear it any more. What if something happens to the patients?" he told Reuters. The last-minute scramble for oxygen at Dharamveer Solanki Hospital is playing out across the city and the country, which is facing the world's largest surge in COVID-19 cases. Hospitals in India's capital, renowned for some of the best medical care in the country, are unable to guarantee basic services and thousands of lives hang in the balance - a stark warning of how India's healthcare system is buckling amid the pandemic. Big private hospital chains have not been spared. This week in New Delhi, which has been hit particularly hard by the coronavirus, seven Max Healthcare hospitals treating more than 1,400 COVID-19 patients were down to between 2 and 18 hours of oxygen left. Staff at a major facility of the Apollo group had a harrowing night wondering if oxygen to 200 patients would run out. A tanker arrived at around 3 a.m., just in time, a source at the hospital said. As panic breaks out at hospitals unable to admit some people with severe COVID-19 symptoms, police are being deployed to secure oxygen. In court, judges are challenging the central government to do more to address shortages. In a late-night court hearing on Wednesday, Delhi justices called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government to "beg, borrow, steal or import" to meet the city's needs. Officials said they were arranging supplies, but the judges weren't convinced. The state "cannot say 'we can provide only this much and no more', so if people die, let them die; that cannot be an answer by a responsible sovereign state," said Justice Vipin Sanghi. OXYGEN EMERGENCY Demand for medical oxygen has soared. India recorded 314,835 new COVID-19 infections on Thursday, the highest tally anywhere during the pandemic. In Delhi alone, the daily rise is around 25,000. Modi and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal have been criticised for failing to plan for the upsurge in cases. On April 13, when Delhi recorded 13,000 new cases, Kejriwal told a news channel there was "no shortage of oxygen". Five days later, he tweeted, "OXYGEN HAS BECOME AN EMERGENCY". "It is poor forecasting. Maybe they are not able to understand the gravity of the situation," said Anant Bhan, an independent researcher of global health and bioethics. "This is a reminder again - we should have extra reserves of oxygen. It shows poor planning." A senior gas industry source directly involved in supplying oxygen to Delhi hospitals said the city had moved too slowly in recent days in liaising with authorities and suppliers. The city has few production units nearby and transportation is a challenge. The Delhi government and federal health ministry did not respond to Reuters questions for this story. At an INOX gas plant in the state of Uttar Pradesh, around an hour's drive from Delhi, 12 trucks from cities across northern India were waiting to load oxygen on Thursday. Six drivers told Reuters they had faced long delays, as surging demand from hospitals in the capital and elsewhere outstripped supply. "We have been waiting for three days," said Bhure Singh, one of the drivers. "Demand has increased and there is no gas." The plant has been visited by government officials and police, some carrying assault rifles. An Uttar Pradesh police officer said they had been given orders to escort trucks in some instances to make sure they reached their destination. LAWYERS' BARBS At one Max facility in west Delhi treating 285 COVID-19 patients, oxygen supplies this week ran dry as authorities diverted their tanker to another hospital, the healthcare group wrote in a letter to Delhi's health minister. Staff had to borrow cylinders from another facility. The medical superintendent at the Shanti Mukund Hospital, Kulwinder Singh, told Reuters on Thursday they were asking families of 85 patients who needed high-flow oxygen to make other arrangements because they had only two hours' worth of supply. Some hospitals in Delhi have run out of oxygen altogether, putting lives at risk, the city's deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia said in a televised address. "After some time, saving lives would be difficult," he warned. In the capital, the fight for oxygen has reached the High Court, where judges convened late on Wednesday night to hear a plea from Max hospitals. For around two hours, lawyers for Delhi and the federal government traded barbs over transportation challenges and supplies. Other lawyers shared real-time updates on oxygen tanks reaching hospitals in the city, and a judge took notes on demand and supply statistics for the capital. The Supreme Court also intervened, saying Modi's administration should draw up a plan to address shortages of oxygen and critical supplies. "The situation is alarming," the court said. (Additional reporting by Alasdair Pal in Yusufpur and Danish Siddiqui in New Delhi; Editing by Mike Collett-White) Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Don't they have a chief of state who loves Trump? You can see the results of his logic at work on a massive scale. By the way, where in the world is Trumpism working? Brazil? North Korea? Russia?
As India hits a million Covid cases in three days, ASHISH SRIVASTAVA's harrowing first-hand account says: Babies are sick and pregnant women dying. I saw bodies outside a hospital India has seen more than one million coronavirus cases since Wednesday A new variant has seeped so deeply into the community its impossible to avoid The country's outbreak is now being described as the most deadly in the world The worst affected areas, including New Delhi, Mumbai and the state of Maharashtra, have run out of hospital beds and life-saving oxygen https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...SHISH-SRIVASTAVAs-harrowing-hand-account.html
Its like this in the Phillipines too. My cousin and my aunt and uncle got covid, and he needed hospitalization and couldn't get in due to space limits. They had local political connections too. They were able to get an at home oxygen kit somehow.
How the turns have tabled. I voted for this xenophobic policy and it’s nice to see it implemented. Keeps those brown people out unless it’s from south of the US border. Finally, someone taking this seriously is in charge!! https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/04/30/politics/us-india-travel-restrictions/index.html Biden administration to restrict travel from India starting Tuesday By Kaitlan Collins and Maegan Vazquez, CNN Updated 4:11 PM EDT, Fri April 30, 2021
See, sometimes xenophobia is a good thing. It just took my man Joe some time to come around to embracing it. https://www.air.tv/watch?v=ggkXUdBvS46p4SRIAgm_4w Yes, Biden absolutely did oppose the China travel restrictions and call them 'xenophobic'
There was more context than just banning the Chinese. Trump was telling us in his usual veiled way how he hated the Chinese.
