NEW DELHI — India saw record new jumps in
Covid-19 cases and deaths on
Thursday, dashing tentative hopes that the catastrophic recent surge was
easing.
اضافة اعلان
Health ministry numbers showed 3,980 deaths in the past 24 hours, taking the
national total to 230,168, and 412,262 new cases, bringing India's caseload
since the
pandemic began to 21.1 million.
Many experts suspect that with low levels of testing and poor record-keeping
for cause of death -- and crematoriums overwhelmed in many places -- the real
numbers could be significantly higher.
The rise follows several days of falling case numbers that had raised
government hopes that the virus surge may have been easing.
Having hit a high of 402,000 last Friday, the daily number of cases eased to
as low as 357,000 before creeping up again on Tuesday.
Senior health ministry official Lav Aggarwal had told reporters on Monday
that there was a "very early signal of movement in the positive
direction".
The sharp rise in cases since late March has overwhelmed hospitals in many
places, with fatal shortages of beds, drugs and oxygen.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has resisted imposing a new
lockdown although several regions including the capital New Delhi, Bihar and
Maharashtra have imposed local shutdowns.
Until now the worst-hit areas have been Delhi and Maharashtra but other
states including West Bengal, Kerala and Karnataka are now reporting sharp
rises.
K. Vijay Raghavan, the Indian government's principal scientific advisor,
said Wednesday that the country of 1.3 billion had to be ready for another wave
of infections after the current one.
"Phase 3 is inevitable given the high levels of circulating virus. But
it is not clear on what timescale this phase 3 will occur. We should prepare
for new waves," Raghavan told a news conference.
With the government facing criticism as patients die outside hospitals,
consignments of oxygen and equipment have been arriving from the
United States,
France, Britain, Russia and other countries in recent days.
But India will need yet more oxygen from other countries to fight the surge
until numbers stabilise, another government official said Monday.
"We did not and do not have enough oxygen," the top government
official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "If we could get more
oxygen more lives would be saved."
Overnight, 11 people died in a hospital near the southern city of Chennai
after pressure dropped in oxygen lines, the Times of India reported on
Thursday, the latest in a string of similar incidents.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has
called for "urgent" international action to prevent "a worsening
human catastrophe" across South Asia.
It highlighted the case of Nepal, where it said "many hospitals are
full and overflowing" with Covid-19 patients and the daily caseload is 57
times higher than one month ago.
The National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) said on Wednesday meanwhile
that the UK strain of COVID-19 was more dominant in north India, while the new
Indian variant known as B.1.617 was more prevalent in Maharashtra, Karnataka
and Gujarat, reports said.
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