NEW DELHI / BENGALURU (Reuters). Many Indians struggled on Thursday to secure beds in hospitals for relatives affected by coronavirus as infections skyrocketed daily, overwhelming medical facilities and oxygen supply dried up.
A massive second wave of infections is centered on the rich state of Maharashtra, which accounts for a quarter of the count, and which is spreading more widely as doctors and experts blame everything from official complacency to aggressive variants.
The government blamed the widespread failure to meet the standards on physical distance and the use of masks.
“The situation is dire,” said Avinash Gawande, an official of a government hospital in the industrial city of Nagpur, which fought a flood of patients, as well as hospitals in the surrounding state of Gujarat and Delhi in the north.
“We are a hospital with 900 beds, but there are about 60 patients waiting and we do not have room for that.”
Maharashtra, home of the financial capital of Mumbai, began a blockade at midnight to suppress the spread of disease, a move that spurred a rush to essential objects in advance.
India has added 200,739 infections in the past 24 hours, according to the Ministry of Health, for a seventh daily record increase in the last eight days, while 1,038 deaths have taken its toll to 173,123.
The count of 14.1 million infections is second in the United States with 31.4 million.
Despite injecting about 113 million vaccine doses, the highest figure worldwide to the United States and China, India covered only a small portion of its 1.4 billion people.
Follow the pandemic in India: tmsnrt.rs/3tks6Zt
Graph: COVID-19 cases in major Indian cities:
Graphic: daily business tax in India:
CHURCHES IN NEW DELHI ORDER
In the capital, New Delhi, authorities have ordered a curfew rule for the weekend to place curbs on shopping malls, gyms, restaurants and some weekly markets.
As infections climbed, doctors warned that the surge could be more deadly than last year.
“This virus is more contagious and virulent … We have 35-year-olds with pneumonia in intensive care, which did not occur last year,” said pediatrician Dhiren Gupta at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital. “The situation is chaotic.”
Outside a large morgue in the city, weeping relatives gathered in the hot sun to wait until the bodies of loved ones were released.
Forty-year-old Prashant Mehra said he had to pay a broker for preferential treatment before he could have his 90-year-old grandfather admitted to an overcrowded state hospital.
“He died after six or seven hours,” he said. “We asked for all our money back.”
Oxygen supply, which is critical to combating respiratory problems, has fallen short in places like Gujarat, the homeland of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“If such conditions continue, the death toll will rise,” the head of a medical body in the industrial city of Ahmedabad said in a letter to his chief minister.
Television broadcast images of a long line of ambulances with virus sufferers waiting to be admitted to a city hospital that could house more than 1,000.
India has been producing oxygen at full capacity for the past two days, the government said, increasing production.
“Along with the increased production … and the surplus stock available, the current availability is adequate,” the health ministry said in a statement.
In the northern city of Haridwar, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims gathered on Wednesday for a Hindu religious festival on the banks of the River Ganges, sparking fears of a new upsurge.
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; Edited by Lincoln Feast and Clarence Fernandez