A grim surge in India has sent more and more sick people into a fragile health care system critically short of hospital beds and oxygen. Photo / AP
A grim surge in India has sent more and more sick people into a fragile health care system critically short of hospital beds and oxygen. Photo / AP
314,835 new infections have been recorded in the past 24 hours, the most of any country since the coronavirus pandemic began
In the back of the ambulance pulled up outside a hospital in Delhi a bare-foot elderly woman lies on her side on a gurney.
A queue has formed up to the doors where desperate family-members beg staff to let their relatives, most of whom are barely breathing, inside for treatment with the oxygen they need to survive.
The elderly woman's son manages to bring a doctor over to the ambulance, but he can offer no assistance: the woman has died before she could inhale from the hospital's dwindling supplies.
This scene captured by the BBC is being repeated across the Indian capital as the country on Thursday broke the global record for coronavirus cases, recording 315,000 in the teeth of a fierce second wave driven by a more virulent strain of the virus.
Police in Haryana, the state surrounding Delhi, have been ordered to escort every delivery of oxygen, after desperate families looted oxygen cylinders from a hospital in Madhya Pradesh.
"There are no hospital beds available and there are no oxygen cylinders available, I have checked nearly every hospital in Delhi," Vinod Srivastava, who is frantically searching for help as her Covid-positive aunt's oxygen levels hit dangerously low levels, told the Telegraph.
Politics is exacerbating the crisis in the capital as some states governed by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) block supplies meant for Delhi, which is run by the opposition Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
Health workers attend to a patient at the Jumbo Covid-19 hospital in Mumbai. New infections are rising faster in India than any other place in the world. Photo / AP
"We are being forced to give our oxygen to Delhi. First, we'll complete our needs, then give to others," said Haryana's BJP Health Minister, Anil Vij.
The decision had by Thursday left all but one of Delhi's major hospitals with less than 24 hours' worth of oxygen, according to Delhi's Ministry of Health. Some had just six hours remaining.
Supplies that were meant to reach Delhi from Haryana on Wednesday had only partially arrived by Thursday evening.
"We've been making internal arrangements for now, but it will become tough to save lives after some time. Some Delhi hospitals have run out of oxygen completely," said Manish Sisodia, the deputy chief minister of Delhi.
At Holy Family Hospital, one of Delhi's leading private facilities, an ambulance arrives with a critical Covid-19 patient requiring oxygen every three minutes.
"It's really, really bad. It was like Lombardy in Italy last year but we have a much worse healthcare system. So many people are dying as they travel between hospitals trying to find oxygen," said Dr Sumit Ray, Holy Family's medical superintendent.
On Thursday, Holy Family Hospital was one hour away from running out of oxygen for its 340 critical Covid-19 patients, who would have "died in minutes", if the delayed tanker from Haryana hadn't arrived.
"Every hospital is running right on the edge here in Delhi, some have supplies left for just half an hour. If they run out of oxygen that's it, patients will die suddenly in droves," said Ray.
Some hospitals in Delhi have begun discharging critical patients because they cannot keep up with their oxygen demand.
"I am not managing patients or my hospital, I am just managing oxygen supplies, I haven't slept for 36 hours," said Dr Pankaj Solanki, medical director at Dharamveer Solanki Hospital.
"I still had to discharge eight patients today because I could not provide them with oxygen and tell them to manage themselves at home."
Across India, the situation is also deteriorating rapidly. On Wednesday, in the city of Nashik in Maharashtra, at least 24 critical Covid-19 patients died after their hospital's oxygen tanker leaked, disrupting supplies.
The scarcity has resulted in thousands of Indians taking to social media to beg for help for their relatives and friends, while oxygen cylinders are being sold on the black market for 35,000 rupees ($650) in Delhi.
There have been separate reports in the Indian media in April of patients dying in at least six other states, including Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh, due to sudden hospital oxygen shortages.
In an attempt to meet the widespread shortages the Indian Government has now banned the supply of oxygen for industrial purposes, other than in nine essential industries, and intends to import 50,000 metric tonnes from abroad.
People in PPE wait outside a mortuary to collect the body of their relative who died of coronavirus, in New Delhi, India. Photo / AP
The Indian Supreme Court has also ordered the authorities to put together a national plan on how to deal with the shortages by Friday, describing the current situation as a "national emergency".
"If we do not centralise data and use ambulances to take patients to hospitals with free oxygen we are going to see many more deaths, it is going to get much worse still over the next two weeks," said Ray.
"I was in disbelief when I saw the doctors crying in Lombardy but now I know why they were crying. It is unbelievable, the absolute devastation around you."
