Cemeteries are becoming scarce, hospitals are turning patients away and desperate families are pleading on social media for beds and medicine.
India on Wednesday reported 295,041 cases of coronavirus and 2,023 deaths, the highest increase in cases and the highest increase in deaths recorded in a single day since the start of the pandemic, according to a CNN figure from the Indian Ministry of Health.
“The volume is huge,” said Jalil Parkar, a senior lung consultant at Lilavati Hospital in Mumbai, who had to transform his vestibule into an additional Covid ward. “It’s just like a tsunami.”
“Things are out of control,” said Ramanan Laxminarayan, director of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy in New Delhi.
“There is no oxygen. It’s hard to find a hospital bed. It’s impossible to get a test. You have to wait longer than a week. And almost every system that can break down in the health care system has broken down,” he said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the country on Tuesday, acknowledging the country’s ‘big fight’ against Covid-19.
He called on states to “use a closure as their last option”, even as the capital New Delhi entered its first full day of a week-long shutdown.
Delhi Minister Arvind Kejriwal warned on Monday that the failure to stop the movement in the city could lead to ‘tragedy’.
“We do not want to take Delhi to a place where patients lie in hospital corridors and people die on roads,” Kejriwal said.
On Tuesday, he warned that some hospitals in Delhi were ‘only left with a few hours of oxygen’, while authorities scrambled to turn sports complexes, banquet halls, hotels and schools into much-needed treatment centers, with the aim of adding 6,000 extra beds. are days.
“Our healthcare system has reached its limit. It is now in a state of emergency. It has not collapsed yet, but it is in distress,” Kejriwal said. “Every healthcare system has its limits. No system can accommodate unlimited patients.”
As shortages have been reported across the country, local and state leaders have called on the federal government to provide more oxygen and medicine.
Modi apparently answered the calls on Tuesday and announced plans for the delivery of 100,000 cylinders nationwide, new oxygen production plants and hospitals dedicated to Covid patients.
But experts fear it is too little, too late, as positive patients compete for limited resources and mass gatherings threaten to spread the virus further.
Beg online help
Since there are few official options available, some families turn to social media for help.
Mumbai resident Anil Tiwari, 34, lost his father to Covid-19 in November last year. Last week, his 58-year-old mother tested positive. She was admitted to the hospital but needed an intensive care unit (ICU) bed, Tiwari said.
After days of effort, including calling the municipal authorities to get on a waiting list, Tiwari’s mother is finally getting an ICU bed, Tiwari said on Tuesday. But now she needs oxygen, of which the hospital is in short supply.
She can still walk, but struggling to breathe, Tiwari said.
Concerned families are also calling on social media for the delivery of the antiviral drug Remdesivir.
Demand for the drug and its active pharmaceutical ingredients increased during the second wave, which prompted the government to temporarily ban the export of medicines to increase supply in the local market.
Abhijeet Kumar, a 20-year-old university student, took to Twitter to raise money to pay for Remdesivir injections for his 51-year-old uncle.
According to Kumar, his uncle has been in hospital in Raipur, in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, since April 9, after testing positive for Covid.
“The injections are very expensive,” Kumar said. “They say it costs between 12,000 and 15,000 rupees (about $ 160-200). He got two doses of the injection, but he needs a third and we can not afford it … my uncle works as a plumber. “
Seven major manufacturers of Remdesivir have reduced prices to between 899 rupees and 3,490 rupees (about $ 12-47) as a result of ‘government intervention’, according to a government memorandum on 17 April.
But several states have acknowledged that high demand and low supply have created a black market for Remdesivir and similar drugs.
Even many doctors and nurses are looking for furious beds and treatment options for their own loved ones, said Parkar, a lung specialist in Mumbai.
“Everyone is sick,” he said. “The time has come for us not to have beds for our own colleagues, our own parents and our own extended family.”
Dissatisfaction and public gatherings
The second wave, which has long surpassed the first wave in both new cases and infection rates, was “a situation created by complacency,” Laxminarayan said. of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy.
After the first wave ended in the winter, the government and the public relaxed too much due to a mixture of Covid fatigue and a false sense of security, experts say.
This kind of triumphant rhetoric has meant residents are relaxing their Covid-safe behaviors, such as social removal or wearing face masks, experts say. And, despite warnings about Covid’s risks, big events continued – sports matches resumed, extensive weddings continued and cinemas reopened.
The festival officially began on April 1 and ends later this month. There are Covid-safe guidelines in place – visitors must register online and pass a negative Covid-19 test to take part in the holy baths, and thousands of officers are supervising – but experts are worried that this will not be enough to risk, given the large number of participants. Several millions are expected to visit on ‘favorable’ days.
“The Kumbh Mela could happen as one of the biggest mass distribution events ever, simply because of the number of people who turn up there for the ritual bath in the Ganges,” Laxminarayan said.
Modi, who has a significant Hindu base, refrained from commenting on the Kumbh Mela and Covid risks for weeks. But earlier this week, he finally appealed to pilgrims not to gather in Haridwar.
“Now Kumbh must be symbolically executed in the midst of the ongoing corona crisis,” Modi tweeted on Saturday.
But for some, the message of Modi hollow ring as the prime minister continued to hold massive political rallies before the parliamentary and local council elections in four states and one union area.
Videos of Modi’s gatherings, including one in Tamulpur in Assam, on April 3, show him speaking in front of large crowds, packed tightly together and cheering.
In the state of West Bengal, a major electoral field, tens of thousands of people attended by Modi’s Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) and the ruling Trinamool Congress Party.
In light of growing issues, the Indian National Congress, India’s largest opposition party, has suspended all public rallies in West Bengal.
And on Monday, the BJP said it would only hold ‘small public gatherings’ with a cap of 500 people in the state due to ‘the difficult phase of the pandemic’.
Meanwhile, the Kumbh Mela was not ordered to stop, there are also no new rules introduced. The state of Uttarakhand has issued a series of new restrictions, including a night clock and a limit on public gatherings, but the festival has been released.
Haridwar has seen an increase in infections, with more than 6,500 new cases since the onset of the Kumbh Mela.
Several religious subgroups, including Juna Akhara and Niranjani Akhara, have since asked their followers from outside the state to return home and follow guidelines. Some states and cities require festival-goers to be tested and quarantined.
But medical workers fear it is too late.
“It’s been going on for a few weeks now. “Now, of course, they are falling apart, but they may be carrying the virus back to their homes at this point,” Laxminarayan said. “It’s really a terrible situation at this point.”
CNN’s Esha Mitra contributed to this report.