NEW DELHI: The first emergency medical supplies arrived in India on Tuesday as part of a global campaign to staunch a catastrophic wave in the latest pandemic hotspot, with the United States also pledging to export millions of AstraZeneca vaccine doses.
Crates of ventilators and oxygen concentrators from Britain were unloaded at a Delhi airport early Tuesday, the first emergency medical supplies to arrive in the country where infection and death rates are growing exponentially.
The explosion in infections in India — 362,902 new cases were recorded there on Tuesday alone — has driven a surge in global cases to 147.7 million and the virus has now killed more than 3.1 million people worldwide. At least one out of every three new COVID cases around the world Tuesday was recorded in India, with 3,285 more deaths.
In New Delhi, AFP images showed smoke billowing from dozens of pyres lit inside a parking lot that has been turned into a makeshift crematorium. “People are just dying, dying and dying,” said Jitender Singh Shanty, who is coordinating the cremation of around 100 bodies a day at the site in the east of the city.
“If we get more bodies then we will cremate on the road. There is no more space here.” Despite India´s status as the “pharmacy of the world”, the biggest producer of generic drugs has been unable to meet the demand for antiviral medication such as remdesivir. Many doctors say remdesivir is not essential for the treatment of COVID-19, but hospitals have been prescribing it anyway.
“This government has failed us so much that those who can normally survive also die,” said one exhausted man, Vinod Kumar, as he waited in line for medication. As many as 69 COVID care coaches are in use in different parts of India now. Nearly 64,000 beds kept ready by Railways for utilisation by states.
Opposition Congress party has demanded immediate reopening of all closed COVID-19 hospitals and care centres. It demanded increase in availability of oxygen beds on war footing and recalling all retired medical and paramedical staff to serve in hospitals near their homes. The right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in India’s most populous Uttar Pradesh state has ordered a crackdown on individuals and hospitals reporting a shortage of medical oxygen or beds, according to international media reports.
Over the weekend, the northern state’s saffron-clad Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, a firebrand Hindu monk known for his hate speech, threatened to invoke the stringent National Security Act (NSA) and the Gangster Act against anyone trying to spread fear and panic during the pandemic, local reports said.
The United States, France, Germany, Canada and the World Health Organisation (WHO) have all promised to rush supplies to India. Actor Akshay Kumar has also donated 100 oxygen concentrators worth 10 million rupees. France also said it would send eight oxygen production units, as well as oxygen containers and respirators, to India. At the same time, many countries are shutting their borders to travellers from India. Belgium became the latest country to do so, also banning travel from Brazil and South Africa, similarly hit by fast-spreading coronavirus variants.
Spain said it will impose a 10-day quarantine on all travellers arriving from India from Wednesday. Australia has also cut all passenger air travel with India, suspending flights until at least May 15, leaving a host of high-profile cricketers stuck there after playing in the lucrative Indian Premier League (IPL), which attracted criticism for continuing during the crisis.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Australia will not prioritise its IPL cricketers for repatriation from India. Three Australian cricketers have already cut short their IPL season to head home but a number of top players remain, including test stalwarts Steve Smith, David Warner and Pat Cummins. Several Australians, including former test captain Ricky Ponting, are also involved in the IPL as coaches.
In Fiji, an outbreak of the Indian variant has forced the capital into lockdown after the island nation had avoided infections for a year, with health officials saying they fear a “tsunami” of cases.
While there are still no signs of the pandemic abating globally, some western countries are nevertheless tentatively starting to ease the lockdowns that have strangled their economies for more than a year as their inoculation campaigns gather momentum.
