MUMBAI / AHMEDABAD, India (Reuters) – India’s new coronavirus infection hit a record high on Wednesday, and Mumbai will be blocked at midnight, but hundreds of thousands of pilgrims gathered at a religious festival in the north.
The country reported 184,372 cases in the last 24 hours, according to the Ministry of Health, bringing the total infections to 13.9 million. Deaths increased by 1,027 to 172,085.
After reporting less than 10,000 cases a day earlier this year, India has been the worst-hit country in the world since April 2nd. The government accuses here of a general failure to take into account social movements and interactions among the population of 1.39 billion people.
The increase in the number of cases comes as India’s richest state, Maharashtra, the epicenter of the second national wave, is due to enter a complete deadlock at midnight (1830 GMT) by the end of April to contain the spread of the virus. The state accounts for about a quarter of all coronavirus cases in the country.
India’s commercial capital, Mumbai, was full of shoppers, stocking up before the blockade took effect.
“We don’t know if we will be allowed to set up our stalls starting tomorrow, so we ask our customers to stock up as much as possible today,” said Susheela, a street vegetable vendor who goes by her first name.
There were winding lines outside many grocery stores as residents waited to enter.
Elsewhere, large private hospitals are removing patients, placing an increasing burden on government facilities.
In the western state of Gujurat, a Reuters witness on Wednesday saw a long line of ambulances waiting in front of the Ahmedabad civil hospital, with some patients being treated there while they waited.
“My wife tested positive for COVID-19 on Sunday. I called an ambulance this morning to take her to the hospital because she was having difficulty breathing, “Becharbhai Waghela, who was accompanying his 61-year-old wife Shantaben, told Reuters.
“We’ve been waiting by ambulance off campus for the past two hours.”
A hospital source, who declined to be named because she is not allowed to speak in public, said many private hospitals lack oxygen and send their patients to public hospitals.
MANY PILGRIMS
Chhattisgarh State – one of several inland regions struggling with an increase in cases – has set up a 370-bed temporary hospital in an indoor stadium.
“The way COVID-19 cases are on the rise and people get hypoxia or low blood oxygen levels, there is a lack of oxygen supply,” said Avinash Chaturvedi, a doctor at the unit.
“We have turned this stadium into a COVID care center to deal with this situation.”
Despite this, hundreds of thousands of devout Hindus gathered on Wednesday to bathe in the Ganges River in the northern city of Haridwar, the third major bathing day of the week-long Kumbh Mela festival.
Sanjay Gunjyal, the festival’s inspector general of police, said about 650,000 people bathed on Wednesday morning.
“People are fined for not following social distance in crowded ghats (bathing areas), but it is very difficult to fine people in the main ghats, which are very crowded,” he said.
There is little evidence of social distancing or wearing a mask, according to a Reuters witness.
More than a thousand cases have been reported in Haridwar district in the past two days, according to government data.
Reporting by Shilpa Jamkhandikar in Mumbai, Anushree Fadnavis in Haridwar, Saurabh Sharma in Lucknow, Amit Dave and Sumit Khanna in Ahmedabad and Rama Venkat in Bengaluru; Written by Alasdair Pal; Editing by Clarence Fernandez, Simon Cameron-Moore and Toby Chopra