India’s new coronavirus outbreak cases hit another record high, hospitals are in a hurry.
The number of new coronavirus infections in India continues to go high. India’s Ministry of Health reported on Saturday (April 24) that the number of infections reached another record high on Friday, reaching 346,800 cases. Meanwhile, many hospitals are packed with patients, oxygen is in short supply and there are emergency situations.
India is currently in the midst of the second critical wave of the pandemic. One person dies from the new coronavirus every four minutes in the capital city of Delhi.
The Indian government is using military planes and trains to mobilize oxygen to the capital from far away. Television footage shows trucks carrying oxygen arriving at the Batla Hospital in Delhi. The hospital had previously sent a cry for help to the government, saying it had stored enough oxygen for only 90 minutes for 260 patients.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal made the call to Prime Minister Modi at a meeting on Friday. He said, “Please help us get oxygen. Otherwise a tragedy is going to happen here.”
Other parts of India are already in a state of crisis. Some hospitals have issued public notices saying medical oxygen is out of supply. Local media reports say the northern town of Jaipur and the northwestern city of Amritsar have seen a number of patients die from lack of oxygen.
On Thursday, the number of new cases in India on a single day had surpassed the U.S. record of 297,400, making it the heartland of the global pandemic. And at the same time, the epidemic is being contained in many countries around the world. In February, the number of new cases in India dropped to its lowest level, and for a time the Indian government claimed that the outbreak was under control.
However, in the past 24 hours, the number of people who died from the new coronavirus in India has increased by 2,624, a record high for this data.
India’s population of 1.3 billion people has accumulated 16.6 million cases and nearly 200,000 deaths.
Health experts say that last winter, new cases in India dropped to a level of about 10,000 a day, allowing Indians to let down their guard about the outbreak and believe it was under control. Restrictive measures were lifted in many places, and crowd gatherings resumed.
However, Professor Vikram Patel of Harvard Medical School noted that the relaxation of epidemic prevention measures such as wearing masks and maintaining social distance may have contributed to the backlash, but a more likely factor may be the increased virulence of the virus strain.
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