NEW DELHI (AP) – New Delhi imposed a week-long lockdown on Monday evening to prevent the collapse of the Indian capital’s health system, which authorities said had been pushed to the limit amid an explosive rise in cases. of coronavirus.
In scenes known of peaks elsewhere, ambulances catapult from one hospital to another, looking for an empty bed on the weekend, while patients queue outside the medical facilities waiting to be let in. Ambulances also lazed outside the crematoriums with half a dozen dead bodies each. In an effort to combat the crisis, India announced that it would soon extend its vaccination campaign to all adults.
“People keep arriving, in a near-collapsing situation,” said Dr. Suresh Kumar, head of Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital, one of New Delhi’s largest hospitals for the treatment of COVID-19 patients.
Just months after India thought it had experienced its worst pandemic, the virus is now spreading faster than ever before, said Bhramar Mukherjee, a biostatistician at the University of Michigan who has tracked down infections in India.
The country is not alone. Crises are deepening in various places in the world, including Brazil and France, spurred in part by new variants. More than a year after the pandemic, deaths worldwide are on the rise again, averaging nearly 12,000 a day, and new cases are also on the rise. Over the weekend, the global death toll exceeded a whopping 3 million people
But the wave was devastating in India and has weighed heavily on global efforts to end the pandemic as the country is a major vaccine producer, but has had to postpone the export of shots abroad, hampering campaigns in developing countries in particular. As a sign of the high stakes, the CEO of Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest maker of vaccines, asked US President Joe Biden on Twitter last week. to lift the US embargo on the export of raw materials needed to make the recordings.
While fighting the emerging cases, India announced on Monday that it would vaccinate anyone over the age of 18 from May 1. The country began vaccinating health workers in mid-January and later expanded the campaign to over-45s. India has administered 120 million doses so far. to its population of nearly 1.4 billion.
The country reported more than 270,000 infections on Monday, the highest daily increase since the start of the pandemic. It has now recorded more than 15 million infections and more than 178,000 deaths. Experts agree that even these numbers are likely to be under numbersAmid the proliferation of cases, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has called off a trip to New Delhi.
The city of 29 million inhabitants has fewer than 100 beds with fans and fewer than 150 beds are available for patients in need of critical care. Similar tensions can be seen in other parts of the vast country, where the fragile health system has been underfunded for decades and hospitals are weighed down by a lack of preparation for the current boom from mounting infections.
In the Himalayan region of Indian-controlled Jammu and Kashmir, the weekly average of COVID-19 cases has increased 11-fold in the past month. In the state of Telengana in southern India, home to the city of Hyderabad where most of India’s vaccine manufacturers are located, the weekly average of infections has grown 16 times in the last month.
Meanwhile, election campaigns continue in the state of West Bengal in eastern India amid an alarming rise there as well, and experts fear crowded rallies could spur the spread of the virus. Top leaders of the ruling Bhartiya Janta party, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have campaigned intensively to win polls in the region.
In New Delhi, on the other hand, officials have started imposing strict measures again. The Indian capital was closed over the weekend, but now authorities are extending that for a week: all shops and factories will close except those providing essential services such as supermarkets. People are not allowed to leave their homes except for a few reasons, such as seeking medical care.
They will be allowed to travel to airports or train stations – a difference from the last lockdown when thousands of migrant workers were forced to walk to their hometown.
That hard closure last year, which lasted months, has left deep marks. Politicians have since been reluctant to even mention the word. When similar measures were imposed in recent days in the state of Mahrashtra, home to the financial capital of Mumbai, officials refused to call it a lockdown. Those restrictions will last for 15 days.
Kejriwal, the Delhi official, urged calmness, especially among migrant workers who suffered especially during the previous shutdown, saying it would be “minor”.
But many feared it would spell economic downfall. Amrit Tripathi, a worker in New Delhi, was one of thousands who walked home during last year’s lockdown.
“We will starve,” he said, if the current measures are extended.
This story has been updated to correct that the weekly average of COVID-19 cases in the past month has increased 11 times in the Himalayan region of Jammu and Kashmir, not 14 times. It also corrects that that region is not a state.
Hussain reported from Srinagar. Associated Press writer Neha Mehrotra contributed to this report.
The Associated Press Department of Health and Science is supported by the Science Education Department of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The AP is solely responsible for all content.