NEW DELHI / BENGALURU (Reuters) – India reported a record 200,000 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, and Mumbai’s financial center has stalled as many hospitals treating coronavirus patients have reported severe bed shortages and oxygen supplies.
The rise was the seventh record daily rise in eight days and comes as India struggles with a second massive wave of infections that has its epicenter in the significant economic state of Maharashtra, home to Mumbai. The western state accounts for about a quarter of all cases in the country.
India has reported 200,739 COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, according to the health ministry released on Thursday. The deaths amounted to 1,038, totaling 173,123.
The total load of cases reached 14.1 million, only second to the United States, leading the overall number with 31.4 million cases.
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(Chart: COVID-19 cases in major Indian cities 🙂
(Chart: Daily case load in India 🙂
Hospitals and doctors in Maharashtra, as well as other regions, including Gujarat and northern Delhi, have reported chaotic scenes as healthcare facilities have been overwhelmed by an increase in hospitalizations of COVID-19 patients.
“It simply came to our notice then. We are a 900-bed hospital, but there are about 60 patients waiting and we have no room for them, ”said Avinash Gawande, an official at Nagpur Government College and Hospital, a shopping center in Maharashtra.
Hospitals elsewhere, including Gujarat, the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have reported a lack of oxygen. “If such conditions persist, the death toll will rise,” Ahmedabad’s chief of staff wrote in a letter to Gujarat’s chief minister.
The Indian government has said the country has been producing oxygen at full capacity on a daily basis for the past two days and has increased production.
“Along with the increased production of oxygen production units and available surplus stocks, the current availability of oxygen is sufficient,” the health ministry said in a statement on Thursday.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims gathered on Wednesday for a religious holiday in the north of the country, sparking fears of a new wave of COVID-19 cases in the region.
And in the capital Delhi, daily COVID-19 cases are reaching new records, with doctors warning that the increase could be more fatal than in 2020.
“This virus is more infectious and virulent … We have 35-year-olds with intensive care pneumonia, which was not the case last year,” said Dhiren Gupta, a pediatrician at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in New Delhi. “The situation is chaotic.”
Report by Neha Arora in New Delhi; Additional reports by Rama Venkat in Bengaluru and Sumit Khanna in Ahmedabad; Written by Sachin Ravikumar; Editing by Shri Navaratnam and Lincoln Feast.