A relative of a Covid victim breaks down during cremation in Jammu, India on April 25. Photo / AP
A relative of a Covid victim breaks down during cremation in Jammu, India on April 25. Photo / AP
Grief-stricken relatives are being forced to store their dead at home and hospitals are struggling to function amid India's horrifying coronavirus surge.
In the simmering New Delhi heat, Muhammad Yusuf has struggled to find a place to bury his mother, Noor Jahan, 65, who died on Friday at her home in the capital.
"There is no dignity in death here. Instead of mourning our dead, we are fighting with the fear that they should get a space for burial," Yusuf said.
Yusuf has installed cooling appliances at home to keep his mother's body from decomposing before she can be laid to rest.
"There is desperation among people all around. Covid has overwhelmed Delhi, not just its hospitals and graveyards," he said.
An unprecedented surge in Covid deaths has meant crematoriums and graveyards in Delhi and many other parts of India are being overwhelmed, with a large backlog building for burials and cremations.
Municipal workers prepare to bury the body of a Covid-19 victim in Gauhati, India on April 25. Photo / AP
Delhi has been hit hard by oxygen shortages, and 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 on the black market at a huge markup, and some hospitals have demanded that patients arrive with their own oxygen canisters.
Unable to treat the growing number of patients, hospitals in the city have been forced to turn away critically ill people.
Britain, US, EU pledge help
Britain announced today it will ship more than 600 pieces of equipment to New Delhi to support its fight against the virus, following a request from India.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged the UK would do "all it can" to help.
Health workers and relatives carry the body of a Covid-19 victim for cremation in Jammu, India on April 25. Photo / AP
"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," Johnson said in a statement.
In total, nine airline container-loads of supplies were due to leave the UK, including 495 oxygen concentrators, 120 non-invasive ventilators and 20 manual ventilators.
Anthony Fauci, senior medical adviser to US President Joe Biden, said that a raft of measures is under consideration, including sending oxygen, Covid tests, drug treatment and personal protective equipment to India.
Dr Fauci added the US would aid India's vaccine shortfall either by sending doses or boosting the country's ability to manufacture its own supply as a backlash against the US's stockpile of vaccines grows.
"Bottom line, it's a terrible situation that's going on in India and other lower-middle-income countries, and there is more we can do," he said.
The EU, which last week signed the world's biggest vaccine deal to secure 1.8 billion Pfizer doses, said the bloc was coordinating medicine and oxygen supplies.
"Alarmed by the epidemiological situation in India. We are ready to support," European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said on Twitter.
Friends of a patient carry an oxygen cylinder for them inside a hospital in Srinagar, Kashmir on April 25. Photo / AP
On Sunday (local time), for the fourth day in a row, India set a global daily record for new infections, spurred by a new variant that developed in the country.
The 349,691 confirmed cases over the past day brought India's total to more than 16.9 million, behind only the US. The health ministry reported another 2767 deaths in 24 hours, pushing India's death toll to 192,311.
However, the true numbers are believed to be up to 10 times higher than those the stretched health authorities have been able to record.
The wave comes shortly after India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared his country's victory over the pandemic.
Like Yusuf, many other families across India are in a desperate rush to get bodies of relatives out of their homes before they start to decompose.
Since March, when case numbers began to increase, the capital's biggest burial ground, Ahle-Islam Qabristan, has buried nearly 1300 bodies.
Funeral pyres burn at a ground that has been converted into a crematorium in New Delhi on April 24. Photo / AP
It is running out of space to bury more, and has warned it may have to stop taking in more corpses from next week.
"I have never seen such a rush of bodies. We are now turning down many requests for burial because we can't accommodate everyone," said Mohammad Shamim, supervisor of the burial ground.
"It looked nothing less than a war zone with dead bodies lying around all over and men in PPE kits appearing as soldiers in uniform guarding their martyrs and getting ready for another round of a deadly battle," one local said.
Similar scenes are playing out at the city's biggest crematorium, Nigambodh Ghat, where relatives have to wait for hours for their turn to cremate their dead.
There is a glimmer of hope from Maharashtra state, where the new wave began. Its biggest city, Mumbai, saw a drop in cases for the first time since March 31, with 5888 new infections, a significant drop from the record high on April 4 of 11,206 infections.
However, both private and public hospitals in the city said they are seeing no reduction in patient numbers, nor the severity of cases.
"We are still getting just as many people arriving at our emergency ward, looking for a bed and being turned away," said a spokesperson of a leading private hospital. "So in that sense, things have not changed."
Over the weekend, the city's positivity rate fell to 15 per cent from 18 per cent over the previous week, indicating a drop in the prevalence of Covid-19 in the city.
It is not clear whether this is because of an actual drop in cases or that fewer people are being tested. Similar drops have also been reported in other cities in the state, including Nashik, Pune and Nagpur.
