On April 24, 2021, India reported 349,691 new cases of Covid-19, the fourth day in a row the country has set a world record for daily infections during the coronavirus pandemic, according to government and scientific tallies. The country’s testing is haphazard at best so those numbers are a vast under count. The country also reported its highest daily death toll for the ninth consecutive day, adding 2,767 fatalities in the past 24 hours.
India’s heath care system has broken under the load. Everything is in short supply — intensive care unit beds, medicine, oxygen and ventilators. Bodies are piling up in morgues and crematoriums, and authorities have been forced to hold mass cremations at makeshift sites.
At one hospital a faulty valve in the main oxygen tank caused a leak that resulted in 22 patient deaths. People are being turned away since hospitals are full to capacity. People are dying as they wait with no oxygen. Oxygen tankers require police escorts. On April 21, 2021, Saroj Hospital and Batra Hospital told families to take their patients away as they were running out of oxygen. Many people are dying at home.
People stood in long lines literally all day long with no social distancing in the hopes of getting remdesivir. There is now a black market for the drug in India. Nurses at a prominent private hospital in Meerut stole a dying patient’s remdesivir and auctioned it off. Dr. Randeep Guleria said, Remdesivir is not a magic bullet and is given only to patients who are hospitalized, have moderate to severe disease and whose oxygen saturation is below 93.
One of America’s highly regarded epidemiologists and bio statisticians has said that according to her mathematical projections, Professor Bhramar Mukherjee of Michigan University told Karan Thapar of The Wire that India could have 500,000 daily COVID-19 cases and 3,000 daily COVID-19 deaths by May 1, 2021. She said, the peak will come in mid-May when India could see over 800,000 daily infections and in terms of deaths, the peak could be two weeks later at the end of May.