NEW DELHI — India's new coronavirus infections hit a record peak
for a fifth day on Monday, as countries including Britain, Germany and the
United States pledged to send urgent medical aid to help battle the crisis
overwhelming its hospitals.
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Infections in the last 24 hours rose to 352,991, with overcrowded
hospitals in Delhi and elsewhere turning away patients after running out of
supplies of medical oxygen and beds.
"Currently the hospital is in beg-and-borrow mode and it is
an extreme crisis situation," said a spokesman for the Sir Ganga Ram
Hospital in the capital, New Delhi.
A blaze in a hospital in the western city of Surat killed four
COVID-19 victims on Sunday, municipal health official Ashish Naik told Reuters
partner ANI in the latest of a series of similar recent tragedies.
Earlier, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had urged all citizens to
get vaccinated and exercise caution, while hospitals and doctors put out urgent
notices saying they were unable to cope with the rush of patients.
In some of the worst-hit cities, including New Delhi, bodies were
being burnt in makeshift facilities offering mass services.
Television channel NDTV broadcast images of three health workers
in the eastern state of Bihar pulling a body along the ground on its way to
cremation, as stretchers ran short.
"If you've never been to a cremation, the smell of death
never leaves you," Vipin Narang, a political science professor at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (
MIT) in the United States, said on
Twitter.
"My heart breaks for all my friends and family in Delhi and
India going through this hell."
On Sunday, President Joe Biden said the United States would send
raw materials for vaccines, medical equipment and protective gear to India.
Germany joined a growing list of countries pledging to send supplies.
India, with a population of 1.3 billion, has an official tally of
17.31 million infections and 195,123 deaths, after 2,812 deaths overnight,
health ministry data showed, although health experts say infections and deaths
are probably far higher.
The scale of the second wave knocked oil prices on Monday, as
traders worried about a fall in fuel demand in the world's third-biggest oil
importer.
Rally backlash
Politicians, especially Modi, have faced criticism for holding
rallies, during state election campaigns, attended by thousands of people,
packed close together in stadiums and grounds, amid the brutal second wave.
Several cities have ordered curfews, while police have been
deployed to enforce social distancing and mask-wearing.
Still, about 8.6 million voters were expected to cast ballots on
Monday in the eastern state of West Bengal, in the penultimate part of an
eight-phase election that will wrap up this week.
Voting for local elections in other parts of India included the
most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, which has been reporting an average of
30,000 infections a day.
Modi's plea on vaccinations came after inoculations peaked at 4.5
million doses on April 5, but have since averaged about 2.7 million a day,
government figures show.
Several states, including Maharashtra, the country's richest,
halted vaccinations in some places on Sunday, saying supplies were not
available.
Vaccine demand has outpaced supply as the inoculation campaign
widened this month, while companies struggle to boost output, partly because of
a shortage of raw material and a fire at a facility making the AstraZeneca
dose.
However, the federal government will not import vaccines itself
but expects states and companies to do so instead, preferring to guarantee
purchases from domestic manufacturers as a measure of support, two government
officials told Reuters.
Hospitals in Modi's western home state of Gujarat are among those
facing an acute shortage of oxygen, doctors said.
Just seven ICU beds of a total of 1,277 were available in 166 private
hospitals designated to treat the virus in the state's largest city of
Ahmedabad, data showed.
"The problem is grim everywhere, especially in smaller
hospitals, which do not have central oxygen lines," said Mona Desai,
former president of the
Ahmedabad Medical Association.
Neighbouring Bangladesh sealed its border with India for 14 days,
its foreign ministry said on Monday, though trade will continue. Air travel has
been suspended since Bangladesh imposed a lockdown on April 14 to combat record
infections and deaths.
"The borders should not reopen until the situation in India
improves," virologist and government adviser Nazrul Islam told Reuters.
"If the highly contagious Indian variant enters the country, the situation
can't be controlled in any way."
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