NEW DELHI – Gasping for breath, two men wearing oxygen masks share a bed in a government hospital in the Indian capital of New Delhi, victims of the country’s growing COVID-19 crisis.
Of less than 10,000 new daily cases reported earlier this year, daily infections exceeded 200,000 on Thursday, according to official data, the highest in the world.
At Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital (LNJP), one of the largest COVID facilities in India with more than 1,500 beds, a stream of ambulances took patients to the overcrowded victim ward on Thursday.
Some also arrived on buses and three-wheeled auto rickshaws.
The youngest patient was a newborn.
“We are definitely overloaded. We are already operating at full capacity, ”said the hospital’s medical director, Suresh Kumar.
Of the initial 54 beds, the hospital now has more than 300 for COVID-19 critically ill patients. Even that is not enough.
Unrelated patients share beds, while the bodies of the recently deceased are outside the ward before being taken to the morgue.
“Today we have 158 admissions in Lok Nayak alone,” said Kumar. Almost all were serious cases.
After imposing one of the world’s toughest lockdowns for nearly three months last year, the Indian government relaxed almost all curbs in early 2021, although many regions have now introduced local restrictions.
The LNJP’s Kumar said fast-spreading new variants that bypass testing increase the burden, as did human behavior when the country reopened.
“People don’t follow COVID guidelines,” he said. “They’re just careless.”
Outside the hospital morgue, crying relatives gathered in the hot sun to wait for the bodies of loved ones to be released.
Prashant Mehra, 40, said he had to pay a real estate agent for preferential treatment before he could hospitalize his 90-year-old grandfather. The hospital did not immediately respond to a request for comment on its comments.
Mehra said the effort made little difference in the end.
“He died after six or seven hours,” he said. “We have already claimed our money back.”