NEW DELHI — Indian hospitals and government leaders scrambled
for supplies of oxygen and other emergency aid Friday, as the country reported
another record number of new coronavirus infections and a rising death toll
that has strained the country’s resources.
اضافة اعلان
India recorded more than 330,000 new cases in 24 hours, the
health ministry said Friday, the second consecutive day that the country has
set a global record for daily infections. The reported death toll Friday was
more than 2,200, also a new high for the country.
About half of the cases in
Delhi, the capital city of more than
20 million people, are testing positive for a more contagious variant of the
virus, first detected last year in India, that is afflicting younger people,
said a health ministry official, Sujeet Singh.
It is unclear to what extent the variant is driving the surge in
cases around the country, with large gatherings of unmasked people and
widespread neglect of preventive measures also suspected.
As India’s catastrophic second wave of the coronavirus deepened
Friday, Canada joined Britain, Hong Kong, Singapore and New Zealand in barring
travelers from the country. The US State Department advised people against
going to India after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention raised the
country’s risk level to its highest measure.
“Demand for hospital beds and medical supplies have taxed the
health care system to capacity in many cities, and critical care bed space is
severely limited,” the travel advisory said.
With the mutant strain of the virus racing through Delhi, the
capital territory’s government has imposed a weeklong lockdown. That has
stranded thousands of people who rely on daily wages, leaving many to camp on
the banks of the Yamuna River, where they survive on a Sikh temple’s
twice-daily food deliveries.
In Maharashtra, which includes Mumbai and is one of India’s
worst-hit states, a hospital fire attributed to a faulty air-conditioning unit
killed at least 13 COVID-19 patients Friday. Two days before, at least 22
patients were killed in a hospital in the city of Nashik, also in Maharashtra,
after a leak cut off their oxygen supplies.
Facing a barrage of criticism for his government’s handling of
the second wave, Prime Minister
Narendra Modi canceled plans to travel to West
Bengal for a campaign rally ahead of an election in that state.
Even as cases have climbed, Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata
Party and other parties have continued to hold mass rallies with thousands of
people unmasked. The government has also allowed an enormous Hindu festival to
draw millions of pilgrims despite signs that it has accelerated the spread of
the virus.
“Leadership really matters. We saw the early loosening of
appropriate measures. Election rallies continued, and religious festivals
turned into superspreader events,” said Krishna Udayakumar, an associate
professor of global health and director of the Duke Global Health Innovation
Center.
“There was perhaps a lost opportunity to learn from the first
wave,” Udayakumar said.
That initial wave peaked in August and September, months after
India abandoned a nationwide lockdown that crippled the economy.
The disaster now consuming India is playing out vividly on
social media, with Twitter feeds and WhatsApp groups broadcasting hospitals’
pleas for oxygen and medicines, and families’ desperate searches for beds in
overwhelmed COVID-19 wards. With many hospitals short of ventilators,
television news reports have shown patients lying inside ambulances parked
outside emergency rooms, struggling to breathe.
Swati Maliwal, an activist and politician in Delhi, tweeted that
her grandmother had died while waiting outside a hospital in Greater Noida,
near New Delhi.
“I kept standing there for half hour and pleading for admission
and nothing happened,” she wrote. “Shame! Pathetic!”
On April 15, the health ministry said in a statement that India
had a daily production capacity of about 7,700 tons of oxygen, with 55,000 tons
in reserve. Not all of it goes to medical use — some is used for industrial
purposes, including India’s enormous steel-making industry.
On April 21, a government official told the Delhi High Court
that medical demand had reached 8,800 tons per day, beyond the daily production
capacity.
Modi’s government is in charge of allocating the national oxygen
supplies, and Thursday, India’s Supreme Court gave the government a week to
come up with a “national plan” for distribution. The health ministry was told
to issue a purchase order to import 55,000 additional tons of oxygen.
Oxygen is difficult to store and transport, and it isn’t generally
manufactured near India’s biggest cities, which are now reeling from the sudden
spikes in cases.
(BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM.)
States have accused each other of hoarding oxygen and blocking
tankers at border crossings. Looters stole several cylinders of oxygen from a
tanker making a delivery to a hospital in the state of Madhya Pradesh.
At least three states, including Madhya Pradesh, have asked Modi’s
government to send so-called Oxygen Express trains with large oxygen tanks for
hospitals.
(END OPTIONAL TRIM.)
On Thursday, Fortis Healthcare, one of India’s top hospital
chains, tweeted an SOS message to Modi and his chief deputy, Amit Shah, the
minister for home affairs, appealing for more oxygen at a hospital in Haryana
state, on the Delhi border.
“Fortis Hospital in #Haryana has only 45 minutes of oxygen left,”
the company wrote, asking government officials “to act immediately and help us
save patients’ lives.”
Four hours later, the hospital received a tanker, the company
tweeted.
It wasn’t clear whether every hospital with a critical need for
oxygen was getting it in time.
Arvind Kejriwal, the top elected official in Delhi, said that
the city needed a daily supply of 770 tons of oxygen. Modi’s government has
allocated 530 tons.
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