India’s COVID-19 disaster yesterday deepened with its daily death toll surpassing 3,600, as more international aid was flown in, with the US sending nearly 1 million test kits.
This week, the US and several European countries have started to ease restrictions, following successful vaccination campaigns, but the COVID-19 pandemic continues to worsen in many parts of the world.
Among the most devastating of those waves is in India, where the death and infection rates have been rising exponentially throughout this month.
Photo: AFP
Yesterday, India reported 3,645 deaths for the previous 24 hours, while confirmed new cases of COVID-19 were a global record at more than 379,000.
The official numbers are believed to be far lower than the reality.
In many Indian cities, hospitals are running out of beds as relatives of the sick crowd outside pharmacies and suppliers of oxygen cylinders.
Photo: AFP
“We rushed to multiple hospitals, but were denied admission everywhere,” said the son of an 84-year-old woman, who died at home this week after a desperate search for a hospital bed and oxygen in Kolkata, capital of West Bengal state.
The spiking body count has also overwhelmed crematoriums and graveyards, and caused a shortage of wood for funeral pyres.
The Indian government is to open vaccinations to all adults from tomorrow. It had previously limited shots to those aged 45 or older and certain other groups.
However, several states have said that they do not have sufficient vaccine stocks and the expanded rollout is threatened by administrative bickering, confusion over prices and technical glitches on the government’s digital vaccine platform.
Many nations have rushed to help India, including the US, which on Wednesday announced that it was sending more than US$100 million in supplies.
A first US military flight, carrying 960,000 rapid tests and 100,000 masks for frontline health workers, was to arrive yesterday.
The WHO has said that the virus variant feared to be contributing to the catastrophe in India has been found in more than 10 countries, but the organization stopped short of saying that it is more transmissible, more deadly or able to dodge vaccines.
Ugur Sahin, cofounder of vaccine developer and Pfizer partner BioNTech, said he was confident that his company’s shot works against that variant.
In the US, President Joe Biden on Wednesday hailed his nation’s inoculation program as one of the “greatest logistical achievements” in US history, but outside of the wealthier parts of the world, governments are scrambling to find any available vaccine stocks.
A deal has been signed to produce Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine in Argentina, where the pandemic restrictions and the resulting economic collapse continue to punish the poorest.
Before the crisis, Daisy Garcia used to serve meals to about 80 people at a soup kitchen on the outskirts of the capital, Buenos Aires.
She now distributes meals for almost 1,000.
“We never, never imagined it would come to this,” the 26-year-old said.
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