NEW DELHI (AP) – India on Thursday reported more than 200,000 new cases of coronavirus, which has skyrocketed over the past 14 million in general, as an intensive outbreak puts a cruel weight on its fragile healthcare system.
In the capital, New Delhi, more than a dozen hotels and wedding banquet halls have been ordered to be converted into COVID-19 centers connected to hospitals.
“The boom is alarming,” said SK Sarin, a government health expert in New Delhi.
Delhi’s top-elected official Arvind Kejriwal announced the weekend curfew to break the chain of infections in the capital, adding 17,282 new cases and another 104 deaths in the previous 24 hours.
Travels to train stations, hospitals and airports are allowed as essential services, but shopping malls, gyms, spas and auditoriums must be closed, he said in a statement. He also said 5,000 hospital beds are available and more capacity is being added, so there was no shortage of beds in the capital.
The hustle and bustle of India’s largest city and financial capital, Mumbai, has plagued the country to curb the spread of the virus. The action that hit the Maharashtra state the hardest on Wednesday night shut down most industries, businesses and public places and restricted the movement of people for 15 days, but stopped the train and air services.
In recent days, migrant workers transporting backpacks have overcrowded trains leaving Mumbai, an exodus among panicked day laborers.
In addition to the 200,739 new cases of infection, the Ministry of Health also reported 1,038 deaths due to COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, which has increased the deaths to 173,123 since the pandemic began last year.
India’s overall business is second behind the United States and its deaths fourth behind the US, Brazil and Mexico. The actual numbers could be much higher with limited tests among India’s nearly 1.4 billion people.
Shahid Jamil, a virologist, said the recent local and state elections with large political rallies and a large Hindu festival with hundreds of thousands of devotees bathing in the Ganges River in the northern city of Haridwar were an extremely widespread event.
India increases its vaccination campaign. The Ministry of Health said the total vaccinations crossed 114 million with more than 3 million doses administered on Wednesday.
Hospitals in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and several other states were overwhelmed by patients with several hospitals reporting shortages of oxygen cylinders.
Cremation and cemeteries in the area hardest hit have also found it difficult to cope with the increasing number of corpses in recent rituals, Indian media reported.
Imran Sheikh, a resident of the western city of Pune, said hospital authorities had asked him to arrange an oxygen gas cylinder for his family member undergoing COVID-19 treatment.
New Delhi and dozens of other cities and towns introduced night clocks because they had an infection rate that almost doubled within 11 days.
When infections began to decline in India in September, many came to the conclusion that the worst was over. Masks and social distance were abandoned. When affairs began to increase again in February, the authorities left scurrying.