NEW DELHI / BENGALURU (Reuters) – India reported a record 200,000 new COVID-19 cases Thursday and Mumbai’s financial center was shut down as many hospitals treating coronavirus patients reported severe shortages of beds and oxygen supplies.
The rise was the seventh daily record increase in the past eight days and comes as India battles a massive second wave of infections that has its epicenter in the economically important state of Maharashtra, home to Mumbai. The western state accounts for about a quarter of the country’s total cases.
According to Ministry of Health data released Thursday, India reported 200,739 COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours. The number of deaths was 1,038, bringing the total to 173,123.
The total number of cases reached 14.1 million, only second to the United States, which is the world leader with 31.4 million cases.
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(Image: COVID-19 cases in major Indian cities 🙂
(Image: daily case load in India 🙂
Hospitals and doctors in Maharashtra and other regions, including Gujarat and Delhi in the north, reported chaotic scenes as healthcare facilities were overwhelmed by an increase in admissions of COVID-19 patients.
“The situation is dire. We are a 900-bed hospital, but we have about 60 patients waiting and we have no room for them, ”said Avinash Gawande, an official at the Government Medical College and Hospital in Nagpur, a commercial center in Maharashtra.
Hospitals in other places, including Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state, reported oxygen shortages. “If such conditions persist, the death toll will rise,” the head of a medical authority in Ahmedabad wrote in a letter to the Gujarat chief minister.
The Indian government said the country had been producing oxygen every day at full capacity for the past two days and had ramped up production.
“Together with the increased production of the oxygen production units and the surplus supplies that are available, the current availability of oxygen is sufficient,” the health ministry said in a statement Thursday.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims were still thronging to a religious festival in the north of the country on Wednesday, sparking fears of another wave of COVID-19 cases in the region.
Daily COVID-19 cases are also reaching new records in the capital Delhi, with doctors warning that the rise could be more deadly than in 2020.
“This virus is more contagious and virulent … We have 35-year-olds with pneumonia in intensive care, which didn’t happen last year,” said Dhiren Gupta, a pediatrician at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in New Delhi. “The situation is chaotic.”
Reporting by Neha Arora in New Delhi; Additional reporting by Rama Venkat in Bengaluru and Sumit Khanna in Ahmedabad; Written by Sachin Ravikumar; Editing by Shri Navaratnam and Lincoln Feast.