New Delhi
Delhi hospitals issued desperate appeals for oxygen on Friday and 13 Covid patients died in a fire, as India’s healthcare system buckles under a new wave of infections.
The surge in cases, blamed on a new virus variant and the government allowing “super spreader” public events to go ahead, saw another 330,000 new infections and 2,000 deaths reported in the past 24 hours.
The latest in a string of fires at hospitals broke out on the outskirts of Mumbai early Friday morning, a local official told AFP. It has since been put out and the cause was being investigated.
“There were 17 patients inside when a fire broke out in the ICU of Vijay Vallabh Hospital, out of which 13 died and four have been shifted to other facilities,” fire department official Morrison Khavari said.
India’s healthcare system has long suffered from underfunding and the new Covid outbreak has seen critical shortages in oxygen, drugs and hospital beds, sparking desperate pleas for help.
Earlier this week, 22 Covid-19 patients died at another hospital in the same state of Maharashtra when the oxygen supply to their ventilators was disrupted by a leak.
India has recorded more than four million infections this month, dashing hopes at the start of the year that it may have seen the worst of the pandemic.
This mistaken belief led the government to lower its guard, allowing most activity to return almost to normal, including weddings and permitting spectators at cricket matches.
The vast Kumbh Mela festival, one of the world’s biggest religious gatherings, held in the city of Haridwar between January and this week, attracted an estimated 25 million Hindu pilgrims, mostly without masks or social distancing.
Several state elections have seen big campaign rallies including one by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Kolkata that drew an estimated crowd of 800,000.
“The government has been caught with its pants down,” call centre executive Navneet Singh, 38, told AFP.
The United Arab Emirates on Thursday became the latest country to impose travel restrictions on India, suspending flights on one of the world’s busiest air corridors.
Canada also halted flights from India as well as Pakistan.—Agencies
