NEW DELHI – The Indian healthcare system is showing signs of collapsing under the pressure of a second wave of coronavirus infections as authorities reported nearly 300,000 new cases on Wednesday and an accident at a Covid-19 hospital killed more than 20 people.
The accident occurred in a hospital in the western state of Maharashtra after a leak in the hospital’s main oxygen tank cut off oxygen supplies to dozens of critically ill people. Televised images showed family members crying in the wards and nurses frantically pounding the chest of some patients.
Throughout the week, hospitals across India are warning of an acute oxygen shortage. Many hospital officials said they were just hours away from running out.
“Nobody thought this would happen,” said Subhash Salunke, a medical adviser to the Maharashtra government.
India is now home to the world’s fastest growing Covid-19 crisis, with 294,000 new infections on Wednesday and more than 2,000 deaths. As supplies of hospital beds, oxygen and vaccines run out, criticism of the government is mounting.
In a televised address on Tuesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged people to be more cautious, but said lockdowns were a last resort. States and cities are increasingly shutting down on their own, and critics say the government’s mixed reports are making matters worse.
As examples, they refer to recent political rallies held by Mr. Modes that have drawn thousands, as well as to the government’s decision to run a massive Hindu festival despite signs that it has become a super-scattered event. A few days ago, Mr. Modi stated that he wanted Hindu worshipers to stay away from this year’s festival called the Kumbh Mela, which is held on the banks of the Ganges River that are considered sacred by many Hindus.
But the worshipers keep coming – 70,000 showed up on Wednesday for a holy dip, bringing the total to more than 10 million since the festival began in January – and government officials on the ground are doing little to stop them.
Event organizers said worshipers had to produce a negative coronavirus test result or be tested on the spot, but they also recognized that with such an enormous crowds, some participants could have slipped in without being tested. Photographs show a sea of worshipers huddled in the gray waters of the river, many without masks. According to reports from the Indian news media, more than 1,000 tested positive on the site in just 48 hours.
Leaders of the political opposition and religious minorities in India say Mr Modi’s government, firmly rooted in a Hindu-first worldview, gives preferential treatment to Hindus.
“It’s a clear example of double standards,” said Khalid Rasheed, president of the Islamic Center of India, a religious nonprofit.
He compared the apparent government approval of the Kumbh to how it handled a much smaller gathering of a few thousand Muslim preachers in New Delhi last March. Not only was the seminary where it was hosted closed, but hundreds of people were also detained. Officials from Mr Modi’s party blamed the seminary for spreading the virus.
That led to an anti-Muslim campaign across India in which Muslims were attacked with cricket bats and ran out of their neighborhoods. Many of the Muslims arrested in seminary a year ago are still awaiting trial.
Government officials have defended the Kumbh festival as securely as the virus infects some of the most high-profile attendees, including the former King of Nepal and his wife.
Another visitor who was infected is Tirath Singh Rawat, the Prime Minister of Uttarakhand, who, as the state host of this year’s festival, will generate millions of revenue from the pilgrims and vendors. Mr. Rawat freely mingled in the maskless crowd, telling those who asked him that “faith in God will overcome fear of the virus.”
Shailesh Bagauli, a state official, said the festival’s timing was determined by “optimal astrological conditions” and that the government had taken measures such as wearing a mask and social distancing.
On Wednesday, news of the hospital’s oxygen leak quickly spread across the country, raising fears that the health care system here, which is chronically underfunded, was on the verge of collapse.
Indian news channels showed images of the oxygen leak at Zakir Hussain Hospital in Nashik city.
“When we reached the site, it was all foggy,” said SK Bairagi, a fire chief in the city. He said it took about 30 minutes to fix the tank.
The diminishing oxygen supply is becoming one of the most alarming aspects of India’s second wave. To speed up delivery to hospitals, the Indian Rail Service has started running so-called “oxygen express” trains across the country.
The Indian Ministry of Health has said that daily oxygen demand in hospitals has reached about 60 percent of the country’s daily production capacity of just over 7,000 tons. Government officials this week refuted news reports that said India had increased oxygen exports as the second wave of infections approached, saying those exports amounted to less than 1 percent of daily production capacity.
But the Health Ministry also said it planned to import 50,000 tons of medical oxygen from abroad, a sign that the Indian government may be concerned about the domestic supply.
On Tuesday evening, more than a dozen hospitals in New Delhi, the capital, issued a warning that they were hours away from a lack of oxygen.
In Lucknow, another major city in northern India, the Mayo Medical Center warned on Wednesday that it only took 15 minutes of emergency supplies and that “oxygen is nowhere available in Lucknow.”
Later in the day, hospital officials said they had received 40 oxygen bottles. But medical experts said that with so many people getting sick, it was a dangerous time to run out.
“There is definitely an oxygen shortage across the country,” said Shashank Joshi, an endocrinologist and member of the Covid Task Force in Maharashtra. “The situation is grim.”
Mujib Mashal contributed reporting from New Delhi, andBhadra Sharma from Kathmandu, Nepal.