Time.news – India is in chaos, overwhelmed by a very aggressive wave of Covid-19 because it is pushed by a new variant. Now on the fourth consecutive day that breaks its own records of deaths and infections, it is now close to reaching 17 million cases, has exceeded 190 thousand deaths and now has the worst propagation data of the virus: over 349 thousand new cases in the last 24 hours and another 2767 deaths, but the real figures are feared to be much higher.
And now it has rushed to the aid of a country that has a dramatic shortage of oxygen and drugs, with hospitals and health facilities on the brink. The EU said it was ready to intervene and is pooling resources, Britain has promised fans and oxygen cylinders. Israel is also considering sending medical assistance.
The international aid tender is launched
The United States will ship “immediately” the raw materials for the production of vaccines (materials subjected to export controls until now) and also tampons, fans and personal protective equipment.
The UK’s first aid shipment (495 machines that can extract oxygen from the air when hospital cylinders are exhausted, along with 120 non-invasive ventilators and 20 hand ventilators) it should arrive on Tuesday.
The variant of Covid-19 was born from the merger of three different strains
It is a new variant of the coronavirus, born from the “fusion” of three stocks, the one that is overwhelming the Indian subcontinent. Health authorities have registered today the fourth consecutive record of daily infections: 349,691 new infections were reported in 24 hours, for a total of 16.96 million cases since the start of the pandemic.
Numbers that make the Asian giant the second most affected country in the world after the USA, but in this period it is the one in which the highest number of daily infections is recorded. The cases – in the country of 1.35 billion inhabitants – represent over a third of the global total of infections confirmed on Saturday by the WHO, 849,130 new infections.
As for the number of deaths, India is the fourth country in the world after the USA, Brazil and Mexico; but the daily death toll has risen from 300 to over 2,700 in just 4 weeks and continues to rise.
Hospitals collapse in New Delhi, lockdown extended by one week
The capital New Delhi, whose area is one of the most affected, with gThe hospitals collapsed mainly due to lack of oxygen, has announced that it will extend the lockdown by one week. 20 patients died in a city hospital on Saturday, but several hundred patients are at risk in several hospitals due to lack of oxygen.
The government of the nationalist prime minister, Narendra Modi, is now being criticized for not having been able to respond adequately to this new wave. In hopes of reducing deaths and hospitalizations, the authorities focused on increasing the pace of their vaccination campaign, which today passed the threshold of 140 million doses administered in 99 days.
Modi urged all citizens to get vaccinated but the situation is not easy. And it will be difficult to reach the goal of 250 million people vaccinated by July for the simple reason that vaccines are lacking in many states and often the second dose is not received on schedule. India hopes to substantially increase this rate from May 1st, when the over 18s will be able to start getting vaccinated (the initial plan so far only covers the over 45s, health workers and frontline people). But stocks are lacking.
Until mid-April, the vaccination campaign depended on two drugs produced in the country: the national vaccine Covaxin from Bharat Biotech and Covishield, from the British-Swedish laboratory AstraZeneca produced by the Serum Institute of India. The government has announced the opening of a fast track to approve the use of other imported vaccines. This will allow vaccines produced by foreign laboratories such as Pfizer or Moderna to enter the huge Indian market.
The Russian Sputnik V has already obtained authorization for emergency use, but will begin to be imported and manufactured in India in the coming months. And the White House, promising aid today did not mention the possibility of sending quantities of the AstraZeneca vaccine, of which the US has a surplus of 30 million doses.
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