NEW DELHI (AP) – India reported more than 200,000 new cases of coronavirus on Thursday, up more than 14 million in total, as a growing outbreak puts a grim weight on its fragile healthcare system.
In the capital, New Delhi, more than a dozen hotels and wedding banquet halls were commissioned to be converted into COVID-19 centers attached to hospitals.
“The increase is alarming,” said SK Sarin, a government health expert in New Delhi.
Arvind Kejriwal, Delhi’s top elected official, announced curfews to break the chain of infections in the capital, causing 17,282 new cases and 104 more deaths in the past 24 hours.
Travel to train stations, hospitals and airports are allowed as essential services, but shopping centers, gyms, spas and auditoriums must close, he said in a statement. He also said there are 5,000 hospital beds available and more capacity is being added, so there was no bed shortage in the capital.
The hustle and bustle of India’s largest city and financial capital, Mumbai, ebbed under confinement-like curbs to stop the spread of the virus. The action imposed by the hardest hit state of Maharashtra on Wednesday evening closed most industries, businesses and public places and restricted people’s movement for 15 days, but did not stop train and air services.
In recent days, migrant workers with backpacks have swum overcrowded trains leaving Mumbai, an exodus among panic-stricken day laborers.
In addition to the 200,739 new cases of infection, the Department of Health also reported 1,038 fatalities from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, increasing the number of deaths to 173,123 since the pandemic began last year.
The total number of cases in India is in second place after the United States and the number of deaths is fourth after the US, Brazil and Mexico. The actual numbers could be much higher with limited testing among India’s nearly 1.4 billion people.
Shahid Jamil, a virologist, said the recent local and state elections with massive political rallies and a major Hindu festival with hundreds of thousands of devotees bathing in the Ganges River in the northern city of Haridwar were high-speed events.
India is increasing its vaccination urge. The Health Ministry said the total number of vaccinations exceeded 114 million with more than 3 million doses administered Wednesday.
Hospitals in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and several other states were overwhelmed with patients and several hospitals reported shortages of oxygen bottles.
Cremation and burial sites in the hardest-hit area also struggled to cope with the increasing number of bodies arriving for the final rites, according to Indian media.
Imran Sheikh, a resident of the western city of Pune, said hospital authorities asked him to arrange an oxygen gas cylinder for his relative undergoing COVID-19 treatment.
New Delhi and dozens of other cities and towns set night clocks as they battled an infection rate that nearly doubled within 11 days.
When infections in India began to plummet in September, many concluded that the worst was over. Masks and social detachment were abandoned. When the number of cases started to pick up again in February, authorities continued to scramble.