India reported the world’s highest daily tally of coronavirus cases for a second day on Friday, surpassing 330,000 new cases, as it struggles with a health system overwhelmed by patients and plagued by accidents.
Deaths in the past 24 hours also jumped to a record 2,263, the health ministry said, while officials across northern and western India, including the capital, New Delhi, warned most hospitals were full and running out of oxygen.
The surge in cases came as a fire in a hospital in a suburb of Mumbai treating COVID-19 patients killed 13 people on Friday, the latest accident to hit a facility crowded with people infected with the coronavirus.
On Wednesday, 22 COVID-19 patients died at a public hospital in Maharashtra state when their oxygen supply ran out due to a leaking tank, while at least nine coronavirus patients died in a hospital fire in Mumbai last month. It is grim. It is grave … there is an extreme shortage of ICU beds,” T.S. Singh Deo, health minister of the eastern state of Chhattisgarh told Reuters. We’ll need to be very careful in the rural areas. If it spreads there, then it will be out of control,” Deo said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose government has been criticised for relaxing coronavirus controls too quickly, met chief ministers of the worst-affected states, including the capital Delhi, the western state of Maharashtra and Modi’s home state of Gujarat, to discuss the crisis.
Daily infections hit 332,730, up from 314,835 the previous day when India set a new record, surpassing one set by the United States in January of 297,430 new cases. The U.S. tally has since fallen. Authorities have announced vaccines will be available to anyone over 18 from May 1, but experts say there will not be enough for the 600 million people who will be eligible.
“It is tragic, the mismanagement. For a country known to be the pharmacy of the world, to have less than 1.5% of the population vaccinated is a failure difficult to fathom,” Kaushik Basu, a professor at Cornell University and a former economic adviser to the Indian government, said on Twitter.
In other news – AKA finally speaks out on Nelli Tembe’s death
Rapper “AKA” (Kiernan Forbes) has finally broken his silence on the death of his fiancée Anele “Nelli” Tembe.
Speaking about his heartbreak and the toll on him “emotionally and psychologically. Learn more
Source: Reuters
