India’s COVID-19 outbreak has set new records with more than 2,000 deaths in 24 hours – the highest single-day tally for the country so far – as hospitals run perilously low on oxygen amid rising demand for beds.
Coronavirus infections also rose by a record, increasing by 295,041 over the last 24 hours, the health ministry data showed on Wednesday. Total deaths reached 182,553.
India’s overall case tally is now at 15.6 million, second only to the United States, which has over 31 million infections.
But Indian hospitals are scrambling to shore up supplies of medical oxygen amid rising demand for beds as a fast-spreading second wave of coronavirus stretches the country’s chronically underfunded medical infrastructure to breaking point, officials and doctors said.
Hospitals are understaffed and overflowing. Intensive care units are full. Nearly all ventilators are in use and the dead are piling up at crematoriums and graveyards.
The Delhi government-run Sanjay Gandhi Hospital is increasing its beds for COVID-19 patients from 46 to 160. But R Meneka, the official coordinating the COVID-19 response at the hospital, said he was not sure if the facility had the capacity to provide oxygen to that many beds.
Another government-run hospital at Burari, an industrial hub in the capital’s outskirts, only had oxygen for two days Monday and found that most vendors in the city had run out, said Ramesh Verma, who coordinates the COVID-19 response there.
“Every minute, we keep getting hundreds of calls for beds,” he said.
The government issued a call for help on social media, saying large government hospitals only had enough oxygen to last another eight to 24 hours while some private ones had enough for just four or five hours.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who on Tuesday went into self-isolation after his wife tested positive, tweeted late on Tuesday that some hospitals in the capital “are left with just a few hours of oxygen”.
The city’s health minister, Satyendar Jain, urged the federal government to “restore oxygen supply chain to avert a major crisis”.
Hospitals in the western state of Maharashtra and its teeming capital Mumbai, the epicentre of the surge, were also experiencing dire shortages, press reports said.
“Normally we would shift some patients to other hospitals… none in the city have spare oxygen,” NDTV channel quoted one doctor in the state as saying.
Meanwhile, Shahid Malik, who works at a small supplier of oxygen in Delhi, said that the demand for medical oxygen had increased by a factor of 10. His phone has been ringing continuously for two days. By Monday, the shop still had oxygen but no cylinders.
He answered each call with the same message: “If you have your own cylinder, come pick up the oxygen. If you don’t, we can’t help you.”
Tests delayed, vaccination struggling
Coronavirus tests are also delayed as laboratories are unprepared for the steep rise in demand for testing that came with the current surge.
Everyone was “caught with their pants down,” said A Velumani, the chairman and managing director of Thyrocare, one of India’s largest private testing labs. He said that the current demand was three times that of last year.
Notices about the shortage of COVID-19 vaccines seen outside a vaccination centre in Mumbai [Francis Mascarenhas/Reuters]
India launched a vaccination campaign in January but only a tiny fraction of its population has received shots and the enormous drive is struggling.
Several states have flagged shortages, although the federal government has claimed there are enough stocks.
India said last week that it would allow the use of all COVID-19 shots that had been approved by the World Health Organization or regulators in the US, Europe, Britain or Japan.
On Monday, it said that it would soon expand vaccinations to include every adult in the country, an estimated 900 million people.
But with vaccines in short global supply, it is not clear when Indian vaccine makers will have the capacity to meet these goals. Indian vaccine maker Bharat Biotech said it was scaling up to make 700 million doses each year.
‘Like a storm’
In a televised address to the country on Tuesday evening, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said India faced a coronavirus “storm” overwhelming its healthcare system.
“Oxygen demand has increased. We are working with speed and sensitivity to ensure oxygen to all those who need it. The centre, states and private companies, all are working together,” Modi said.
Modi faces criticism that his administration lowered its guard when coronavirus infections fell to a multi-month low in February and allowed religious festivals and political rallies, some of which he permitted to go ahead.
“The situation was manageable until a few weeks ago. The second wave of infections has come like a storm,” Modi said in his address, urging citizens to stay indoors and not panic amid India’s worst health emergency in memory.
New Delhi is under a six-day lockdown to try and stem the transmission. The western state of Maharashtra, home to the financial capital Mumbai, also plans to impose a stringent lockdown this week to try to halt the rise in cases, the cabinet said.
Modi ordered a tough lockdown of India’s 1.3 billion people when the coronavirus was detected last year but his government has always been wary of the huge economic costs of tough restrictions.
He said on Tuesday a lockdown should only be a “last resort”.
‘India failed to learn’
Bhramar Mukherjee, a biostatistician at the University of Michigan who has been tracking India’s pandemic, said India failed to learn from surges elsewhere and take anticipatory measures.
When new infections started dipping in September, authorities thought the worst of the pandemic was over.
Health Minister Harsh Vardhan even declared in March that the country had entered the “endgame”, but he was already behind the curve: average weekly cases in Maharashtra state, home to the financial capital of Mumbai, had tripled in the previous month.
Mukherjee was among those who had urged authorities to take advantage of low cases earlier in the year to speed up vaccinations.
Instead, officials dithered in limiting huge gatherings during Hindu festivals and refused to delay ongoing elections in the eastern West Bengal state, where experts fear that large, unmasked crowds at rallies will fuel the spread of the virus.
Now India’s two largest cities have imposed strict lockdowns, the pain of which will fall inordinately on the poor.
Many have already left big cities, fearing a repeat of last year, when an abrupt lockdown forced many migrant workers to walk to their home villages or risk starvation.
