May 5, 2021 12:29 AM
https://apnews.com/article/india-coronav...753e4ff31c
EXCERPTS: COVID-19 infections and deaths are mounting with alarming speed in India with no end in sight to the crisis and a top expert warning that the coming weeks in the country of nearly 1.4 billion people will be “horrible.” India’s official count of coronavirus cases surpassed 20 million Tuesday, nearly doubling in the past three months, while deaths officially have passed 220,000. Staggering as those numbers are, the true figures are believed to be far higher, the undercount an apparent reflection of the troubles in the health care system.
The country has witnessed scenes of people dying outside overwhelmed hospitals and funeral pyres lighting up the night sky. Infections have surged in India since February in a disastrous turn blamed on more contagious variants of the virus as well as government decisions to allow massive crowds to gather for Hindu religious festivals and political rallies before state elections.
The reported caseload is second only to that of the U.S., which has one-fourth the population of India but has recorded over 32 million confirmed infections. The U.S. has also reported more than 2 1/2 times as many deaths as India, at close to 580,000.
India’s top health official, Rajesh Bhushan, refused to speculate last month as to why authorities weren’t better prepared. But the cost is clear: Many people are dying because of shortages of bottled oxygen and hospital beds or because they couldn’t get a COVID-19 test.
[...] The deaths reflect the fragility of India’s health system. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party has countered criticism by pointing out that the underfunding of health care has been chronic.
But this was all the more reason for authorities to use the several months when cases in India declined to shore up the system, said Dr. Vineeta Bal of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research. “Only a patchwork improvement would’ve been possible,” she said. But the country “didn’t even do that.”
Now authorities are scrambling to make up for lost time. Beds are being added in hospitals, more tests are being done, oxygen is being sent from one corner of the country to another, and manufacturing of the few drugs effective against COVID-19 is being scaled up.
[...] “It’s a terrifying crisis,” said Dr. Punyabrata Goon, convener of the West Bengal Doctors’ Forum. Goon added that the state also needs to hasten immunizations. But the world’s largest maker of vaccines is short of shots, the result of lagging manufacturing and raw material shortages. Experts are also worried the prices being charged for shots will make it harder for the poor to get vaccinated. On Monday, opposition parties urged the government make vaccinations free to all Indians... (MORE - details)
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RELATED (last year's bygone days of subcontinent bravado and swagger):
(April 26, 2020) Why does India have so few Covid-19 cases and deaths?
(Aug 25, 2020) India Is in Denial about the COVID-19 Crisis: The silver lining is that, for reasons that are as yet unclear, COVID-19 mortality in India seems relatively low. The same surveys suggest that the infection-fatality rate (IFR) may be as low as one per thousand. If so, India may not be heading towards a major mortality crisis, or rather a major crisis of COVID-19 mortality, at least relative to normal levels of mortality. COVID-19 deaths so far add up to less than 1 percent of annual deaths from all causes in India. Per million population, there have been just 38 so far, compared with more than 500 in the US.
EXCERPTS: COVID-19 infections and deaths are mounting with alarming speed in India with no end in sight to the crisis and a top expert warning that the coming weeks in the country of nearly 1.4 billion people will be “horrible.” India’s official count of coronavirus cases surpassed 20 million Tuesday, nearly doubling in the past three months, while deaths officially have passed 220,000. Staggering as those numbers are, the true figures are believed to be far higher, the undercount an apparent reflection of the troubles in the health care system.
The country has witnessed scenes of people dying outside overwhelmed hospitals and funeral pyres lighting up the night sky. Infections have surged in India since February in a disastrous turn blamed on more contagious variants of the virus as well as government decisions to allow massive crowds to gather for Hindu religious festivals and political rallies before state elections.
The reported caseload is second only to that of the U.S., which has one-fourth the population of India but has recorded over 32 million confirmed infections. The U.S. has also reported more than 2 1/2 times as many deaths as India, at close to 580,000.
India’s top health official, Rajesh Bhushan, refused to speculate last month as to why authorities weren’t better prepared. But the cost is clear: Many people are dying because of shortages of bottled oxygen and hospital beds or because they couldn’t get a COVID-19 test.
[...] The deaths reflect the fragility of India’s health system. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party has countered criticism by pointing out that the underfunding of health care has been chronic.
But this was all the more reason for authorities to use the several months when cases in India declined to shore up the system, said Dr. Vineeta Bal of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research. “Only a patchwork improvement would’ve been possible,” she said. But the country “didn’t even do that.”
Now authorities are scrambling to make up for lost time. Beds are being added in hospitals, more tests are being done, oxygen is being sent from one corner of the country to another, and manufacturing of the few drugs effective against COVID-19 is being scaled up.
[...] “It’s a terrifying crisis,” said Dr. Punyabrata Goon, convener of the West Bengal Doctors’ Forum. Goon added that the state also needs to hasten immunizations. But the world’s largest maker of vaccines is short of shots, the result of lagging manufacturing and raw material shortages. Experts are also worried the prices being charged for shots will make it harder for the poor to get vaccinated. On Monday, opposition parties urged the government make vaccinations free to all Indians... (MORE - details)
- - - - - -
RELATED (last year's bygone days of subcontinent bravado and swagger):
(April 26, 2020) Why does India have so few Covid-19 cases and deaths?
(Aug 25, 2020) India Is in Denial about the COVID-19 Crisis: The silver lining is that, for reasons that are as yet unclear, COVID-19 mortality in India seems relatively low. The same surveys suggest that the infection-fatality rate (IFR) may be as low as one per thousand. If so, India may not be heading towards a major mortality crisis, or rather a major crisis of COVID-19 mortality, at least relative to normal levels of mortality. COVID-19 deaths so far add up to less than 1 percent of annual deaths from all causes in India. Per million population, there have been just 38 so far, compared with more than 500 in the US.