NEW DELHI – India’s healthcare system shows signs of buckling under the backdrop of a second wave of coronavirus infections as authorities reported nearly 300,000 new cases on Wednesday and an accident at a Covid-19 hospital killed more than 20 of people.
The accident happened at a hospital in the western state of Maharashtra after a leak from the hospital’s main oxygen tank stopped the flow of oxygen to dozens of critically ill patients. The televised images showed family members crying in wards and nurses pounding frantically on patients’ chests.
All week, hospitals in India have warned of an acute shortage of oxygen. Many hospital officials said they were just hours away from completion: “No one imagined this would happen,” said Subhash Salunke, a medical adviser to the Maharashtra government.
India is now hosting the world’s fastest-growing Covid-19 crisis, reporting 294,000 new infections and more than 2,000 deaths on Wednesday. As stockpiles of hospital beds, oxygen and vaccines dwindle, government criticism is growing.
In a televised address on Tuesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged people to be more careful, but said the blockades were a last resort. States and cities are increasingly getting bogged down on their own, and critics say the government’s mixed messages are making things worse.
As examples, they point to the recent political rallies held by Mr Modi, which attracted thousands, as well as the government’s decision to allow a huge Hindu festival to continue, despite signs that it has become a widespread event. A few days ago, Mr. Modi indicated that he wants Hindu worshipers to stay away from this year’s festival, called Kumbh Mela, which takes place on the banks of the Ganges River considered sacred by many Hindus.
But believers continue to come – 70,000 showed up at a holy bath on Wednesday, bringing the total to more than 10 million since the festival began in January – and local government officials are not doing much to stop them.
Event organizers said believers should produce a negative coronavirus test or be tested on the spot, but also acknowledged that with such a large crowd, some participants could have slipped in without being tested. test. The photos show a sea of worshipers wrapped together in the gray waters of the river, many without masks. More than 1,000 gave positive results on the site in just 48 hours, according to Indian news media reports.
India’s political opposition leaders and religious minorities say Mr Modi’s government, which is firmly rooted in a primarily Hindu worldview, is giving preferential treatment to Hindus.
“It is a clear example of double standards,” said Khalid Rasheed, president of the Islamic Center of India, a nonprofit religious organization.
He compared the government’s apparent approval of Kumbh to the way it handled a much smaller gathering of several thousand Islamic preachers in New Delhi last March. The seminar that hosted it was not only closed, but hundreds of people were also detained. Mr Modi’s party officials blamed the seminar for spreading the virus.
This spurred an anti-Muslim campaign across India, in which Muslims were attacked with cricket bats and fled their neighborhoods. Many Muslims arrested at the seminary a year ago are still awaiting trial.
Government officials have defended the Kumbh festival just as surely, even though the virus infects some of its most important participants, including the former king of Nepal and his wife.
Another visitor who has been infected is Tirath Singh Rawat, the chief minister of Uttarakhand, which, as the state hosting this year’s festival, will earn millions in revenue from pilgrims and vendors. Mr. Rawat mingled freely in the maskless crowd and told those who asked him that “faith in God will overcome the fear of the virus.”
Shailesh Bagauli, a state official, said the time of the festival was determined by “optimal astrological conditions” and that the government had implemented measures such as wearing masks and social distancing.
On Wednesday, news of the hospital’s oxygen leak spread rapidly across the country, raising fears that the health care system here, which is chronically underfunded, was on the verge of collapse.
Indian news channels have shown images of oxygen leaks at Zakir Hussain Hospital in Nashik.
“When we arrived at the scene, everything was foggy,” said SK Bairagi, a city fire chief. He said it took about 30 minutes to repair the tank.
The drop in oxygen is becoming one of the most alarming aspects of India’s second wave. To speed up delivery to hospitals, India’s rail service has begun rolling out what it calls “express oxygen” trains across the country.
The Indian Ministry of Health said that the daily demand for oxygen in hospitals reached about 60% of the country’s daily production capacity of just over 7,000 metric tons. Government officials countered this week’s news reports that India had increased oxygen exports as the second wave of infections approached, saying that these exports amounted to less than 1% of daily production capacity.
But the health ministry also said it was trying to import 50,000 metric tons of medical oxygen from abroad, a sign that the Indian government could be worried about domestic supply.
On Tuesday night, more than a dozen hospitals in New Delhi, the capital, issued an alert saying they were out of hours to run out of oxygen.
In Lucknow, another major city in northern India, Mayo Medical Center warned on Wednesday that it was down to a 15-minute backup source and that “oxygen is not available anywhere in Lucknow.”
Later that day, hospital officials said they had received 40 bottles of oxygen. But medical experts said that with so many people getting sick, it was a dangerous time to lose weight.
“There is definitely a lack of oxygen across the country,” said Shashank Joshi, an endocrinologist and member of the Covid working group in Maharashtra. “The situation is bleak.”
Mujib Mashal contributed to the reporting in New Delhi andBhadra Sharma from Kathmandu, Nepal.