New Delhi – India on Thursday reported a global record of more than 314,000 new infections as a serious coronavirus virus grows in the world’s second most populous country and more and more seriously ill people in a fragile health care system are hospitalized. Lacks beds and oxygen.
The 314,835 infections added in the last 24 hours have raised India’s total of the last 15.9 million cases since the epidemic began. It is the second-largest total in the world after the United States, nearly double with 32 million, according to Johns Hopes University. There are about 1.4 billion people in India.
The Times of India newspaper said that the previous highest daily count of 307,581 was counted in the US on 8 January.
The Ministry of Health said that the death toll rose from 2,104 during the last 24 hours, bringing India’s total death toll to 184,657.
AP
CBS News’ Arshad Zargar in New Delhi Described a formidable situation In the country, with more hospitals than capacity and, in some cases, two patients also share a bed. Stocks of oxygen, drugs and vaccines are all running. Doctors and nurses are overworked. The corpses have emerged from a pile of corpses outside the crematoriums and cemeteries. He said that terror has gripped the country Coronavirus cases increase manifold The epidemic occurred one year ago, after the most frightening rate in all of India.
Maithili Badriprasad, 50, a health care practitioner, told CBS News that he had to wait four days to be admitted to a hospital in Bangalore, one of the top tech centers in the world. She tested positive on April 5 and was recommended to be hospitalized if her condition worsened. But there were no beds. She was fortunate to get an oxygen tank to use at home until 9 April, when she was finally admitted to a local ward.
“There was no stretcher or wheelchair, I was told to walk downstairs to recruit myself. I was about to get out,” Badriprasad told CBS News.
Danish Siddiqui / REUTERS
She was discharged after a week, which she called a “shocking and incredible experience”. His lungs still have not fully recovered. “I told my daughter that it’s like the Jurassic world there,” Badriprasad said of the scenes he was watching in the hospital.
Krutika Kuppalli, an assistant professor at the Medical University of South Carolina, tweeted that the number could be much worse than it looks.
“It is scary to think that it is a major weakness that the report says that it is difficult to stop at some places to test # COVID19 and that they are being cremated fast,” he wrote. Adding the ominous warning, “More versions will emerge without an epidemic without control.”
She also said, “# COVID19 has become a public health crisis in #India due to which the healthcare system has collapsed.”
The New Delhi High Court on Wednesday ordered the government to remove oxygen in hospitals from industrial use to save lives of people. The judges, in response to a petition from a hospital in New Delhi seeking the court’s intervention, said, “You people cannot die because there is no oxygen. Beg, borrowed or stolen, this is a national emergency.”
AMIT DAVE / REUTERS
The government is running oxygen tankers to replenish supplies in hospitals.
India’s Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said on Thursday that “demand and supply are being monitored round the clock”. He said in a tweet that to accelerate the demand, the government has increased the oxygen quota for the worst seven states.
Lockdowns and strict restrictions have caused pain, fear and suffering in the lives of many people in New Delhi and other cities.
In familiar scenes around the country, the ambulance is seen running from one hospital to another, trying to find an empty bed. The victims’ families are laying the line outside the crematorium, where dead bodies have arrived several times.
A doctor at Bangalore-based Shanti Hospital and Research Center, Dr. Sanjay Gururaj said, “I get many calls for patients every day. This demand is much more than supply.”
“I try to find beds for patients every day, and it is incredibly disappointing that they are not able to help them. In the last week, three of my patients have died at home because they were unable to get a bed Were. As a doctor, it is. A terrible feeling, “Gururaj said.
Yogesh Dixit, a resident of the northern Uttar Pradesh state, said earlier this week that he had to buy two oxygen cylinders for his ailing father at a normal cost of 12,000 rupees ($ 160) each, more than twice, because the government in Lucknow The hospital was run out of supplies.
“Two bought because doctors could ask for another oxygen cylinder at any time,” he said, adding that he had to sell his wife’s jewelry to meet the cost.
Danish Siddiqui / REUTERS
Around 200 bodies were found on Sunday at the main crematorium ghat in the state capital, Lucknow.
68-year-old Shekhar Chakraborty described the scene. He said, “Bodies were everywhere. He was being cremated for walking. There has never been a flow of dead bodies in my life.”
In Kanpur, another city in the state of Uttar Pradesh, 35 new temporary platforms have been erected at the Bithoor-Siddhanath Ghat on the banks of the Ganges River to cremate the bodies.
The Health Ministry said that a total production of 8,300 tonnes of oxygen per day in the country, 7,275 tonnes is being allocated for medical use.
It also said that 75 railroad coaches have been converted into hospitals in the Indian capital, providing an additional 1,200 beds for COVID-19 patients.
