NEW DELHI / BENGALURU (Reuters) – Many Indians scrambled Thursday to secure beds in hospitals for family members affected by the coronavirus as infections hit a daily record, medical facilities were overwhelming and oxygen supplies dried up.
A massive second wave of infections is concentrating on the wealthy state of Maharashtra, which accounts for a quarter of the total, spreading further as doctors and experts blame everything from official complacency to aggressive variants.
The government blames a widespread lack of adherence to physical distance standards and the use of masks.
“The situation is dire,” said Avinash Gawande, an official at a government hospital in the industrial city of Nagpur that was dealing with a flood of patients, as were hospitals in the neighboring state of Gujarat and Delhi to the north.
“We are a 900-bed hospital, but we have about 60 patients waiting and we don’t have room for them.”
Maharashtra, home to the financial capital of Mumbai, began a lockdown at midnight to curb the spread of the disease, a move that prompted a rush to stock up on essential items ahead of time.
India added 200,739 infections in the past 24 hours, data from the Ministry of Health showed, for a seventh daily record increase in the past eight days, while 1,038 deaths took their toll to 173,123.
The number of 14.1 million infections is in second place after the United States, with 31.4 million.
Despite injecting about 113 million doses of vaccine, the highest figure in the world after the United States and China, India has covered only a small fraction of its 1.4 billion people.
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Figure: COVID-19 Cases in Major Indian Cities:
Image: daily case load in India:
CURBS ORDERED IN NEW DELHI
In the capital, New Delhi, authorities have ordered a weekend clock, curbing shopping centers, gyms, restaurants and some weekly markets.
As infections rose, doctors warned the wave could be more deadly than last year’s.
“This virus is more contagious and virulent … We have 35-year-olds with pneumonia in intensive care, which didn’t happen last year,” said pediatrician Dhiren Gupta at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital. “The situation is chaotic.”
Outside a large city morgue, crying relatives gathered in the hot sun to wait for the bodies of loved ones to be released.
Forty-year-old Prashant Mehra said he had to pay a real estate agent for preferential treatment before he could have his 90-year-old grandfather admitted to an overloaded government hospital.
“He died after six or seven hours,” he said. “We have already claimed our money back.”
Oxygen supplies, essential to combat breathing difficulties, were running up in places like Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state.
“If such conditions persist, the death toll will rise,” the head of a medical agency in the industrial city of Ahmedabad said in a letter to the prime minister.
Televised footage of a long line of ambulances with virus patients waiting to be admitted to a city hospital that seats more than 1,000.
India had been producing oxygen at full capacity for the past two days, the government said, and it had ramped up production.
“Along with increased production … and the surplus supplies that are available, the current availability is sufficient,” the health ministry said in a statement.
In the northern city of Haridwar, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims had come to a Hindu religious festival on the banks of the Ganges River on Wednesday, sparking fears of another wave.
Reporting by Neha Arora and Alasdair Pal in New Delhi; Additional reporting by Rama Venkat in Bengaluru and Sumit Khanna in Ahmedabad; Written by Sachin Ravikumar; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Clarence Fernandez