India
UK to send medical supplies to India
The UK will send medical equipment to India as the latter continues to suffer from a record surge in coronavirus cases, the British government announced Sunday, reported Anadolu Agency.
India set a new global record for daily coronavirus cases for the fourth day in a row on Sunday.
There were 349,691 new cases, taking the total to 16.96 million. Only the US has had more overall cases.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had been due to visit India this week but cancelled his trip due to the surge in coronavirus cases there.
In a statement, he said: "We stand side by side with India as a friend and partner during what is a deeply concerning time in the fight against COVID-19.”
"Vital medical equipment, including hundreds of oxygen concentrators and ventilators, is now on its way from the UK to India to support efforts to prevent the tragic loss of life from this terrible virus.
"We will continue to work closely with the Indian government during this difficult time, and I'm determined to make sure that the UK does everything it can to support the international community in the global fight against pandemic," he added.
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab tweeted: "Today we have sent the first of several urgent deliveries of surplus medical equipment to our friends in India to help provide life-saving care for vulnerable Covid patients. No-one is safe until we are all safe."
India is also suffering from acute shortages of oxygen. The first shipment of medical supplies from the UK will arrive in India on Tuesday morning.
The nine airplane container loads include 495 oxygen concentrators, 120 non-invasive ventilators and 20 manual ventilators. Further shipments of British medical supplies to India will also be sent.
British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said: “The heart-breaking scenes in India show once again how awful this terrible disease is.”
"We are determined to support the people of India through this very difficult time, and I am hugely grateful to those who have worked hard to make this initial delivery happen.
"This first delivery of life saving equipment will provide much needed assistance and we stand ready to do more."
Meanwhile, the UK reported its lowest number of daily coronavirus cases since early September as Britain’s successful vaccination programme continues to prevent a surge of infections despite loosening lockdown measures.
Netherlands to ban flights from India over virus fears
The Dutch ministry in charge of aviation said Sunday that flights from India would be banned until at least May 1 amid concerns about a new coronavirus variant, reported Sputnik.
"A flight ban will take effect for passenger flights from India at 6 pm on Monday, April 26. The flight ban will be in place until at least 00.01 am on May 1," a statement read.
Cargo flights and planes carrying medical personnel and equipment will be exempted.
The flight ban comes on top of an entry ban for non-EU residents. The cabinet decided to double up on it for fear that the Netherlands could become a preferred port of entry for Indians going to the EU.
India has this week reported its highest numbers of new daily cases and deaths since the pandemic began and is facing severe shortages of oxygen. The Dutch government said it would support India with emergency financing of 1 million euro (US$1.2 million).
7th phase of local elections underway in India's West Bengal amid COVID-19 spike
The seventh phase of local elections in India's eastern state of West Bengal is underway amid a huge spike in COVID-19 cases, officials said Monday.
The ongoing phase is being held in the shadow of spiraling COVID-19 cases. During the past 24 hours, 15,889 fresh COVID-19 cases and 57 related deaths were reported across the state.
The polling started from 7:00 a.m. until 6:30 p.m. (local time) amid tight security and adequate arrangements, according to officials.
In the ongoing phase, the voting is going on in 34 constituencies from five districts.
"Until 11:30 a.m. (local time) in today's phase, 37.72 percent of polling has been recorded," an official said. "Polling is going on peacefully and no major untoward incident has been reported so far."
Authorities have deployed 653 companies of paramilitary forces for the ongoing phase.
Special facilities including mandatory sanitization of the polling stations, thermal checking of voters at the entry point have been put in place.
Officials said in view of the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic, the option of postal ballot facility has been extended to the electors who are COVID- 19 positive or suspect as certified by the competent authority and are in home or institutional quarantine along with those marked as persons with disabilities and above the age of 80 years.
Officials said people in large numbers were seen standing in queues from morning outside the polling stations.
"All the necessary facilities and security arrangements have been made to ensure free and fair polling during this phase. The Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) is being used along with Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) at all polling stations with a view to enhance the transparency of the election process," an election official said.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged people to exercise their right to vote and follow the COVID-19 protocol.
Elections in the state would be completed in eight phases and the last phase is scheduled on April 29. The counting of votes will be carried out on May 2.
India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wants to unseat the local All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) in West Bengal. Both the parties have been engaged in a tough fight for the electoral battle in the state.
The elections are being held at a time when India is witnessing a record increase in daily COVID-19 cases.
On Monday the country reported the world's biggest-ever daily surge with 352,991 new cases and 2,812 deaths.
India's crematoriums overwhelmed as virus 'swallows people'
India’s crematoriums and burial grounds are being overwhelmed by the devastating new surge 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.
Also read: Iran bans flights from India and Pakistan
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 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.
Also read: Why India is shattering global infection records
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.
Also read: India's COVID-19 tally nearing 17 mln
25 Covid patients die in Delhi hospital
The oxygen crisis in the Indian capital is escalating by the day. At least 25 Covid patients on life support died at a leading Delhi hospital late on Friday night due to a shortage of the life-saving gas.
Jaipur Golden Hospital, a dedicated Covid medical facility in Delhi, said on Saturday morning that the deaths occurred around midnight on Friday due to "low-supply oxygen" to critical patients on ventilator.
"We had been allotted 3.5 metric tonnes of oxygen from the government. The supply was to reach us by 5 in the evening, but it reached around midnight. By then, 20 patients had died," Dr DK Baluja, the hospital's Medical Director told the media.
Later in the day, the hospital authorities revised the death toll to 25 in a plea to the High Court in Delhi, seeking its immediate intervention in ending the oxygen crisis in thr national capital.
"There is big human tragedy coming in next few minutes in our hospital. We have already lost 25 lives. We are gasping for oxygen. We have our Doctors before you. Please save lives. Please," the plea said.
According to Dr Baluja, over 200 Covid patients admitted at the hospital "continue to remain critical and in dire need of oxygen".
Facing an acute shortage of oxygen, another Covid medical facility in Delhi -- Moolchand hospital -- has also sent out an SOS message to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and the national capital's Lt Governor Anil Baijal.
"Urgent sos help. We have less than 2 hours of oxygen supply @Moolchand_Hos. We are desperate have tried all the nodal officer numbers but unable to connect. Have over 135 COVID pts with many on life support," Moolchand tweeted this morning.
More than 130 Covid patients are on life support at the hospital, the authorities said.
In fact, several hospitals in India, particularly Delhi, are currently facing an acute shortage of oxygen as the country witnesses a ferocious second wave of Covid.
On Friday morning too, another leading hospital in Delhi announced the deaths of 25 patients in 24 hours due to "low pressure oxygen".
In a statement, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital had said, "25 sickest patients have died in last 24 hours. Oxygen will last another two hours. Major crisis likely. Lives of another 60 sickest patients at risk, need urgent intervention."
Some 500 Covid patients are currently being treated at Ganga Ram. Of them, as many as 142 are on life support, according to the hospital.
It may also be mentioned here that 24 Covid patients on ventilator at a government hospital in the western Indian state of Maharashtra died on Wednesday after their oxygen supply ran out following leakage of the life-supporting gas from a tanker.
The tanker was brought to Zakir Hussain Municipal Hospital in the state's Nashik district to replenish the oxygen cylinders at the medical facility for continuous supply to the 150-plus Covid-19 patients on life support.
Such is the shortage of oxygen in the country that chief ministers of many Indian state's have raised the issue with the federal government, seeing Prime Minister Modi's immediate intervention to end the crisis.
"Serious oxygen crisis persists in Delhi. I again urge the Centre (federal government) to urgently provide oxygen to Delhi. Some hospitals are left with just a few hours of oxygen," Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal tweeted on Tuesday.
As per the latest figures released by the Indian Health Ministry, Delhi on Friday registered as many as 348 Covid deaths in 24 hours, its highest single-day toll to date.
Oxygen tank leak claims 22 lives in India Covid hospital
At least 22 Covid-19 patients on ventilator at a government hospital in the western Indian state of Maharashtra died on Wednesday after their oxygen supply ran out following leakage of the life-supporting gas from a tanker, officials said.
The tanker was brought to Zakir Hussain Municipal Hospital in the state's Nashik district to replenish the oxygen cylinders at the medical facility for continuous supply to the 150-plus Covid-19 patients on life support.
"As per current information, 22 people have died due to interrupted supply of oxygen at Zakir Hussain Municipal Hospital in Nashik," district collector Suraj Mandhare told the media.
Local TV channels aired footage of oxygen leaking from the tanker stationed outside the hospital and firefighters trying their best to stop the leak by spraying water.
Also Read: Indian capital gasps for oxygen
Maharashtra's Health Minister Rajesh Tope said that the interrupted supply of oxygen could be linked to the deaths of the patients in the hospital and promised action against any negligence on part of the authorities concerned following a "free and fair probe".
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi took to social media to offer his condolences to the families of the deceased. "The tragedy at a hospital in Nashik because of oxygen tank leakage is heart-wrenching. Anguished by the loss of lives due to it," he tweeted.
State Minister and son of Maharashtra Chief Minister Udhav Thackeray's son Aaditya also called the accident "extremely unfortunate". We all share in the grief of all these families. This unfortunate incident will be thoroughly investigated," he tweeted.
The leakage of the life-supporting gas comes at a time when several Indian states are facing an acute shortage of oxygen cylinders. UNB also reported on Tuesday that several hospitals in the national capital were left with just a few hours of oxygen.
Also read: 5 dead in fire at India's Covid vaccine facility
Last week, India became the second worst-affected country in the world in terms of Covid cases. On Tuesday, India reported as many as 259,170 new cases and 1,761 fatalities in 24 hours, the highest daily death toll since the pandemic broke out in 2020.
India's Covid tally and death toll currently stand at 1,53,21,089 and 1,80,530, respectively, according to the country's Health Ministry.
‘No place for you’: Indian hospitals buckle amid virus surge
Seema Gandotra, sick with the coronavirus, gasped for breath in an ambulance for 10 hours, as it tried unsuccessfully at six hospitals in India’s sprawling capital to find an open bed. By the time she was admitted, it was too late, and the 51-year-old died hours later.
Rajiv Tiwari, whose oxygen levels began falling after he tested positive for the virus, has the opposite problem: He identified an open bed, but the 30-something resident of Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh can’t get to it. “There is no ambulance to take me to hospital,” he said.
Such tragedies are familiar from surges in other parts of the world — but were largely unknown in India, which was able to prevent a collapse in its health system last year through a harsh lockdown. But now they are everyday occurrences in the vast country, which is seeing its largest surge of the pandemic so far and watching its chronically underfunded health system crumble.
Tests are delayed. Medical oxygen is scarce. Hospitals are understaffed and overflowing. Intensive care units are full. Nearly all ventilators are in use, and the dead are piling up at crematoriums and graveyards. India recorded over 250,000 new infections and over 1,700 deaths in the past 24 hours alone, and the U.K. announced a travel ban on most visitors from the country this week. Overall, India has reported more than 15 million cases and some 180,000 deaths — and experts say these numbers are likely an undercounts.
India’s wave of cases is contributing to a worldwide rise in infections as many places experience deepening crises, such as Brazil and France, spurred in part by new, more contagious variants, including one first detected in India. More than a year into the pandemic, global deaths have passed 3 million and are climbing again, running at nearly 12,000 per day on average. At the same time, vaccination campaigns have seen setbacks in many places — and India’s surge has only exacerbated that: The country is a major vaccine producer but was forced it to delay deliveries of shots to focus on its domestic demand.
Also read: Indian capital gasps for oxygen
Bhramar Mukherjee, a biostatistician at the University of Michigan who has been tracking India’s pandemic, said India failed to learn from surges elsewhere and take anticipatory measures.
When new infections started dipping in September, authorities thought the worst of the pandemic was over. Health Minister Harsh Vardhan even declared in March that the country had entered the “endgame” — but he was already behind the curve: Average weekly cases in Maharashtra state, home to the financial capital of Mumbai, had tripled in the previous month.
Mukherjee was among those who had urged authorities to take advantage of cases being low earlier in the year to speed up vaccinations. Instead officials dithered in limiting huge gatherings during Hindu festivals and refused to delay ongoing elections in the eastern West Bengal state, where experts fear that large, unmasked crowds at rallies will fuel the spread of the virus.
Now India’s two largest cities have imposed strict lockdowns, the pain of which will fall inordinately on the poor. Many have already left major cities, fearing a repeat of last year, when an abrupt lockdown forced many migrant workers to walk to their home villages or risk starvation.
New Delhi, the capital, is rushing to convert schools into hospitals. Field hospitals in hard-hit cities that had been abandoned are being resuscitated. India is trying to import oxygen and has started to divert oxygen supplies from industry to the health system.
Also read: India's capital to lock down as nation's virus cases top 15M
It remains to be seen whether these frantic efforts will be enough. New Delhi’s government-run Sanjay Gandhi Hospital is increasing its beds for COVID-19 patients from 46 to 160. But R. Meneka, the official coordinating the COVID-19 response at the hospital, said he wasn’t sure if the facility had the capacity to provide oxygen to that many beds.
The government-run hospital at Burari, an industrial hub in the capitals’ outskirts, only had oxygen for two days Monday, and found that most vendors in the city had run out, said Ramesh Verma, who coordinates the COVID-19 response there.
“Every minute, we keep getting hundreds of calls for beds,” he said.
Kamla Devi, a 71-year-old diabetic, was rushed to a hospital in New Delhi when her blood sugar levels fell last week. On returning home, her levels plummeted again but this time, there were no beds. She died before she could be tested for the virus. “If you have corona(virus) or if you don’t, it doesn’t matter. The hospitals have no place for you,” said Dharmendra Kumar, her son.
Laboratories were unprepared for the steep rise in demand for testing that came with the current surge, and everyone was “caught with their pants down,” said A. Velumani, the chairman and managing director of Thyrocare, one of India’s largest private testing labs. He said that the current demand was three times that of last year.
Also read: India records over 260,000 daily COVID-19 cases, tally at 14,788,109
India’s massive vaccination drive is also struggling. Several states have flagged shortages, although the federal government has claimed there are enough stocks.
India said last week that it would allow the use of all COVID-19 shots that had been greenlit by the World Health Organization or regulators in the United States, Europe, Britain or Japan. On Monday, it said that it would soon expand vaccinations to include every adult in the country, an estimated 900 million people. But with vaccine in short global supply, it isn’t clear when Indian vaccine makers will have the capacity to meet these goals. Indian vaccine maker Bharat Biotech said it was scaling up to make 700 million doses each year.
Meanwhile, Shahid Malik, who works at a small supplier of oxygen, said that the demand for medical oxygen had increased by a factor of 10. His phone has been ringing continuously for two days. By Monday, the shop still had oxygen but no cylinders.
He answered each call with the same message: “If you have your own cylinder, come pick up the oxygen. If you don’t, we can’t help you.”
Indian capital gasps for oxygen
Believe it or not, rising Covid-19 cases have left the Indian capital's medical infrastructure on the brink of collapse. Several hospitals in the city are left with just a few hours of oxygen, the Chief Minister of Delhi said on Tuesday, prompting the High Court to slam the federal government for not banning the industrial use of the life-supporting gas immediately.
On Tuesday, India reported as many as 259,170 Covid-19 cases and 1,761 fatalities in the past 24 hours, the highest daily death toll since the pandemic broke out over a year ago. The national capital alone reported over 30,000 new Covid cases and some 250 deaths.
Also read: India's capital to lock down as nation's virus cases top 15M
"Serious oxygen crisis persists in Delhi. I again urge the Centre (federal government) to urgently provide oxygen to Delhi. Some hospitals are left with just a few hours of oxygen," Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal tweeted, after a number of leading private hospitals claimed that their oxygen supplies will last for a maximum of 8-12 hours.
Local TV channels also beamed footage of hundreds of Delhi residents queuing up in hospitals, begging for beds for their loved ones with Covid-19 positive reports.
Also read: India records over 260,000 daily COVID-19 cases, tally at 14,788,109
Taking cognizance of the media reports and Kejriwal's tweets, the Delhi High Court also came down heavily on the federal government and questioned its decision to implement a ban on the industrial use of oxygen for Covid patients only from April 22. "Economic interests can't override human lives. Else we are heading for a disaster," the court said.
"Out of 130 crore, there are less than two crore official cases. Even if it's five times, that means only 10 crore cases. We should protect the remaining people. At this rate, we might lose one crore people. We should act fast. We are not here to run the government but you have to be sensitive to the situation," a two-judge bench said.
Also read: Covid-19: Global cases near 142 million, deaths top 3 million
UNB had earlier reported that the Covid-19 pandemic has suddenly turned India into a Covid vaccine importer from a mass exporter. And the government has turned to foreign vaccine producers for inoculating the citizens. The Sputnik vaccine from Russia, officials had said, would arrive next month.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi rolled out the world's largest Covid inoculation programme on January 16. Two 'Made in India' jabs, one developed by the Serum Institute in collaboration with AstraZeneca, and the other by Bharat Biotech, are being given.
India records over 260,000 daily COVID-19 cases, tally at 14,788,109
A total of 261,500 new COVID-19 cases were reported in India in the past 24 hours, taking the total tally to 14,788,109, said the data released by the health ministry on Sunday.
This is the first time when the single-day spike crossed the 260,000-mark in India.
Besides, 1,501 deaths were reported, bringing the death toll to 177,150.
There are still 1,801,316 active cases in the country, with an increase of 121,576 through Saturday, while 12,809,643 people have been cured and discharged from hospitals across the country.
Also read: India records highest COVID-19 daily spike of over 100,000 cases
The daily figures continue to peak in the country every day, and the government has imposed new measures to contain the spread. Some school exams were canceled, and others have been postponed in the wake of the deteriorating situation.
India kicked off a nationwide vaccination drive in January, and so far over 122 million people have been vaccinated across the country.
Meanwhile, the government has ramped up testing facilities, as over 266 million tests have been conducted.
A total of 266,538,416 tests have been conducted till Saturday, out of which 1,566,394 tests were conducted on Saturday alone, said the latest data issued by the Indian Council of Medical Research on Sunday.
The national capital Delhi, one of the most affected places in the country, witnessed 24,375 new cases and 167 deaths through Saturday.
So far 11,960 people have died in the city, confirmed Delhi's health department.
As a precautionary measure, Delhi has been witnessing a weekend curfew from Friday night to Monday morning.
India objects to Bangladesh's submission to amend continental shelf limits in line with judgements
India has lodged its objection with the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) over Bangladesh’s claim requesting the Commission not to "consider and qualify" the amended submission made by Bangladesh.
“The consideration and qualification by the Commission on the limits of the Continental Shelf of the amended submission by Bangladesh would prejudice the rights of India over the parts of the continental shelf,” reads a written communication made by the Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations drawing attention to the relevant wing of the UN.
The document dated April 16 was posted on the website of CLCS. The “note verbale” is supposed to be circulated to the members of the Commission and Member States of the UN.
Bangladesh submitted the amended submission on the Continental Shelf to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) of the United Nations on October 22, 2020.