MUMBAI / AHMEDABAD, India (Reuters) – New coronavirus infections in India hit record levels on Wednesday, with Mumbai locked up at midnight, but hundreds of thousands of pilgrims still thronged to a religious festival in the north of the country.
The country reported 184,372 cases in the past 24 hours, data from the Ministry of Health showed, bringing the total number of infections to 13.9 million. The number of deaths increased by 1,027, for a toll of 172,085.
After reporting less than 10,000 cases per day earlier this year, India has been the hardest hit country in the world since April 2. The government here blames the widespread lack of attention to movement restrictions and social interaction among the population of 1.39 billion people.
The increase in the number of cases is as India’s richest state, Maharashtra, the epicenter of the national second wave, will enter a full lockdown at midnight (1830 GMT) until the end of April to stem the spread of the virus. The state accounts for about a quarter of the total coronavirus cases in the country.
India’s commercial capital, Mumbai, was buzzing with shoppers and stockpiling before the lockdown takes effect.
“We don’t know if we’ll be able to set up our stalls from tomorrow, so we’re asking our customers to stock up as much as possible today,” says Susheela, a street vegetable vendor who only passes her first. name.
There were winding lines outside many supermarkets as residents waited to enter.
Elsewhere, congested private hospitals are sending patients away, placing an increasingly heavy burden on government facilities.
In the western state of Gujurat, a Reuters witness saw a long line of ambulances waiting outside Ahmedabad Civil Hospital on Wednesday, treating some patients there while they waited.
“My wife tested positive for COVID-19 on Sunday. We called an ambulance this morning to take her to the hospital because she had breathing difficulties, ”Becharbhai Waghela, who accompanied his wife Shantaben, 61, told Reuters.
“We’ve been waiting in the ambulance outside the hospital campus for two hours.”
A hospital source, who declined to be named because he is not authorized to speak in public, said many private hospitals were deprived of oxygen and were sending their patients to public hospitals.
CROWDS OR PILGRIMS
The state of Chhattisgarh – one of the hinterland regions experiencing a large increase in the number of cases – set up a temporary hospital with 370 beds in an indoor stadium.
“As cases of COVID-19 increase and people get hypoxia or low oxygen levels in the blood, there is a lack of oxygen supply,” said Avinash Chaturvedi, a physician at the facility.
“We converted this stadium into a COVID care center to deal with that situation.”
Despite this, hundreds of thousands of devout Hindus gathered to bathe in the River Ganges in the northern city of Haridwar on Wednesday, the third major bathing day of the week-long Kumbh Mela festival.
Sanjay Gunjyal, the inspector general of the police at the festival, said on Wednesday morning that about 650,000 people had taken a bath.
“People are fined for not following social distance in non-crowded ghats (bathing areas), but it is very difficult to fine people in the main ghats, which are very busy,” he said.
According to a Reuters witness, there was little evidence of social detachment or mask wearing.
According to government data, more than a thousand cases have been reported in Haridwar district in the past two days.
Reporting by Shilpa Jamkhandikar in Mumbai, Anushree Fadnavis in Haridwar, Saurabh Sharma in Lucknow, Amit Dave and Sumit Khanna in Ahmedabad and Rama Venkat in Bengaluru; Written by Alasdair Pal; Edited by Clarence Fernandez, Simon Cameron-Moore and Toby Chopra