From News Nation:
“India’s crematoriums
overwhelmed as virus ‘swallows people’”
India’s crematoriums and burial
grounds are being overwhelmed by the devastating new spike of infections
tearing through the populous country with terrifying speed, depleting the
supply of life-saving oxygen to critical levels and leaving patients to die
while waiting in line to see doctors. For the fourth straight day, India on
Sunday set a global daily record of new infections, spurred by an insidious,
new variant that emerged here, undermining the government’s premature claims of
victory over the pandemic. The 349,691 confirmed cases over the past day
brought India’s total to more than 16.9 million, behind only the United States.
The Health Ministry reported another 2,767 deaths in the past 24 hours, pushing
India’s COVID-19 fatalities to 192,311. Experts say that toll could be a huge
undercount, as suspected cases are not included, and many deaths from the
infection are being attributed to underlying conditions.
The United States said it was
deeply concerned by the massive surge in coronavirus cases in India and was
racing to send aid to India. “Our hearts go out to the Indian people in the
midst of the horrific COVID-19 outbreak,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony
Blinken said on twitter. “We are working closely with our partners in the
Indian government, and we will rapidly deploy additional support to the people
of India and India’s health care heroes.” The United States has faced criticism
in India for its export controls on raw materials for vaccines put in place via
the Defense Production Act and an associated export embargo in February. The
Serum Institute of India (SII), the world’s biggest vaccine maker, this month
urged U.S. President Joe Biden to lift the embargo on U.S. exports of raw
materials that is hurting its production of AstraZeneca shots. Others such as
U.S. Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi urged the Biden administration to release
unused vaccines to India. “When people in India and elsewhere desperately need
help, we can’t let vaccines sit in a warehouse, we need to get them where
they’ll save lives,” he said.
India’s surge is expected to peak
in mid-May with the daily count of infections reaching half a million, the
Indian Express said citing an internal government assessment. The crisis
unfolding in India is most visceral in its graveyards and crematoriums, and in
heartbreaking images of gasping patients dying on their way to hospitals due to
lack of oxygen. Burial grounds in the Indian capital New Delhi are running out
of space and bright, glowing funeral pyres light up the night sky in other
badly hit cities. In central Bhopal city, some crematoriums have increased
their capacity from dozens of pyres to more than 50. Yet, officials say, there
are still hours-long waits. At the city’s Bhadbhada Vishram Ghat crematorium,
workers said they cremated more than 110 people on Saturday, even as government
figures in the entire city of 1.8 million put the total number of deaths at
just 10. “The virus is swallowing our city’s people like a monster,” said
Mamtesh Sharma, an official at the site. The unprecedented rush of bodies has
forced the crematorium to skip individual ceremonies and exhaustive rituals
that Hindus believe release the soul from the cycle of rebirth. “We are just
burning bodies as they arrive,” said Sharma. “It is as if we are in the middle
of a war.” The head gravedigger at New Delhi’s largest Muslim cemetery, where
1,000 people have been buried during the pandemic, said more bodies are
arriving now than last year. “I fear we will run out of space very soon,” said
Mohammad Shameem. The situation is equally grim at unbearably full hospitals,
where desperate people are dying in line, sometimes on the roads outside,
waiting to see doctors.
Health officials are scrambling
to expand critical care units and stock up on dwindling supplies of oxygen.
Hospitals and patients alike are struggling to procure scarce medical equipment
that is being sold at an exponential markup. The crisis is in direct contrast
with government claims that “nobody in the country was left without oxygen,” in
a statement made Saturday by India’s Solicitor General Tushar Mehta before
Delhi High Court. The breakdown is a stark failure for a country whose prime
minister only in January had declared victory over COVID-19, and which boasted
of being the “world’s pharmacy,” a global producer of vaccines and a model for
other developing nations. Caught off-guard by the latest deadly spike, the
federal government has asked industrialists to increase the production of
oxygen and other life-saving drugs in short supply. But health experts say
India had an entire year to prepare for the inevitable — and it didn’t. Dr.
Krutika Kuppalli, assistant professor of medicine in the division of infectious
diseases at the Medical University of South Carolina, said the Indian
government has been “very reactive to this situation rather than being
proactive.” She said the government should have used the last year, when the
virus was more under control, to develop plans to address a surge and
“stockpiled medications and developed public-private partnerships to help with
manufacturing essential resources in the event of a situation like this.” “Most
importantly, they should have looked at what was going on in other parts of the
world and understood that it was a matter of time before they would be in a
similar situation,’’ Kuppalli said. Kuppalli called the government’s premature
declarations of victory over the pandemic a “false narrative,” which encouraged
people to relax health measures when they should have continued strict
adherence to physical distancing, wearing masks and avoiding large crowds.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is
facing mounting criticism for allowing Hindu festivals and attending mammoth
election rallies that experts suspect accelerated the spread of infections. His
Hindu nationalist government is trying to quell critical voices. On Saturday,
Twitter complied with the government’s request and prevented people in India
from viewing more than 50 tweets that appeared to criticize the
administration’s handling of the pandemic. The targeted posts include tweets
from opposition ministers critical of Modi, journalists and ordinary Indians. A
Twitter spokesperson said it had powers to “withhold access to the content in
India only” if the company determined the content to be “illegal in a
particular jurisdiction.” The company said it had responded to an order by the
government and notified people whose tweets were withheld. India’s Information
Technology ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
^ India is facing a grave crisis
that could easily spread throughout the rest of the world if not contained. Countries
need to send more oxygen and medical supplies to India and the Indian Government
needs to face the grim reality that their country is currently in and do a lot
more too. ^
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