145 Million Cases and the Desperate Situation in India

Even as the world reaches 145 million Covid-19 cases, one country stands out. 

Yup, India is back in the limelight when the country recorded the world’s highest daily tally of 332,503 new infections as the unrelenting pandemic raised new fears about the crumbling health services’ ability to cope. Health officials across northern and western India including the capital, New Delhi, said they are in crisis, with most hospitals full and running out of oxygen on Thursday. 

Things are getting from bad to worse. A crematorium in Muzaffarpur, Bihar reported being overwhelmed with bodies and grieving families had to wait for their turn. In Rajkot, Gujarat, city authorities have set up a dedicated 24/7 control room to manage the flow in its four crematoriums because waiting times are now up to eight hours. 

At two crematoriums in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, relatives were issued with numbered tokens and made to wait for up to 12 hours. One started burning bodies in an adjacent park, an official told AFP news agency. 

In Ghaziabad outside New Delhi, television pictures showed bodies wrapped in shrouds lined up on biers on the pavement with weeping relatives waiting for their slot. 

That’s not even half of it! The chimney of one electric furnace in Ahmedabad, Gujarat cracked and collapsed after being in constant use for up to 20 hours every day for the past two weeks. The iron frames inside another in Surat – also in Gujarat – melted because there was no time to let the furnaces cool. And a crematorium east of Delhi built funeral pyres in its parking lot. 

Indian social media and newspaper reports have been flooded with horrifying images of row upon row of burning pyres and crematoriums unable to cope. 

Last week, Sandesh, a Gujarati newspaper, counted 63 bodies leaving a single Covid-19-only hospital for burial in Ahmedabad, on a day where government data showed 20 coronavirus deaths. 

In Lucknow, data from the largest coronavirus-only crematorium, Baikunth Dham, shows double the number of bodies arriving on six different days in April than government data on Covid-19 deaths for the entire city. 

India Today reported two crematoriums in Bhopal, the capital of the central state of Madhya Pradesh, that 187 bodies were cremated following Covid-19 protocols in four days this month, while the official coronavirus death toll stood at five. 

Officially, we're informed 186,000 Indians have died from coronavirus, at least 20,000 of them this month – although many believe the real number may be a lot higher. 

The implacable pandemic is not stopping and India is up the creek without a paddle.