[ The deaths marked a grim new turn in India’s battle with a devastating second wave of coronavirus cases. The country reported more than 346,786 new cases on Saturday, the third consecutive day of record-breaking infections. More than 2,600 people died, although experts say that figure is a vast undercount.]
By Joanna Slater and Shams
Irfan
Ravinder Kumar has worked at Jaipur
Golden Hospital in India’s capital for nearly three decades. All through
Friday, he and the other members of the staff called everyone they could think
of — oxygen vendors, other hospitals, the police, city officials — in a frantic
search for a fresh supply.
“It was as if the entire city was
looking for oxygen,” said Kumar, 55. “I have never felt so helpless in my whole
life.” Around 10 p.m., as the hospital’s tanks neared empty, the oxygen
pressure dropped, disrupting the flow needed for severely ill patients. Within
a couple of hours, 26 of them died, Kumar said.
The deaths marked a grim new turn
in India’s battle with a devastating second wave of coronavirus cases. The country reported more
than 346,786 new
cases on Saturday, the third consecutive day of record-breaking
infections. More than 2,600 people died, although experts say that figure is a
vast undercount.
Experts believe that the influence
of new variants, changes in people’s behavior and complacency on the part of
the government have combined to produce a tidal wave of cases.
The stunning speed of the surge has
overwhelmed hospitals and left the nation reeling. Critically ill coronavirus
patients are being turned away because of a lack of hospital beds. Crematoriums
in some cities are running day and night as deaths increase.
The demand for oxygen has
skyrocketed, especially in Delhi, now the country’s worst-hit city. For days,
officials and hospitals have warned that oxygen supplies were running
dangerously low. Several hospitals announced that they would temporarily stop
admitting patients because of the shortage. Hospitals have issued appeals on
social media, saying they were just hours from disaster.
“Urgent sos help,” Moolchand
Healthcare, a private hospital chain, tweeted in a message to India’s government Saturday.
“We have less than 2 hours of oxygen supply @Moolchand_Hosp. We are desperate.
. . . Have over 135 COVID pt [patients] with many on
life support.”
Indian authorities said they are
commandeering trains and using air force planes to speed up the distribution of
medical supplies to hard-hit regions. Countries including Germany and Singapore are
sending oxygen storage and manufacturing equipment to India.
[As
pandemic surges anew, global envy and anger over U.S. vaccine abundance]
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi
said in a nationwide
address this past week that the second wave had hit the country “like
a storm” and “every effort” is being made to increase oxygen supplies.
Yet the crisis continues. On
Saturday, Arvind Kejriwal, Delhi’s top elected official, pleaded with other
states to provide the city with oxygen — if they had any to spare. The severity
of the outbreak is “such that all available resources are proving inadequate,”
he wrote
on Twitter.
Late Saturday night, Sir Ganga Ram
Hospital, one of the largest private hospitals in the city, issued its fourth
emergency appeal for oxygen in 24 hours. Alarms were beginning to ring on
ventilators, a hospital spokesman said in a statement, and staff members were
starting to resort to manual ventilation. On Friday, 25
critically ill patients died at the same hospital.
Hospitals in Delhi say oxygen
supplies are arriving just as they’re about to run out — but only enough to
last for the next few hours. Batra Hospital, where more than 300 coronavirus
patients are on oxygen support, received a fresh shipment of 1,500 liters of
liquid oxygen at about 5 p.m. Saturday — enough to last about six hours, said
S.C.L. Gupta, the hospital’s medical director. What will happen after that,
“God only knows,” he said.
A number of increasingly desperate
hospitals petitioned the Delhi High Court to compel the authorities to ensure
oxygen deliveries. It’s a “severe crisis,” said Sachin Datta, the lawyer
representing Jaipur Golden Hospital. “If the supply is not met, there might be
further loss of lives.”
Jaipur Golden’s predicament began
this past week, when its main oxygen vendor said it was unable to provide
uninterrupted supply because of the huge spike in demand, said Kumar, a senior
manager at the hospital. On Friday at 1 p.m., Kumar said, he called a senior
city health official. “I told him plainly that people will die if oxygen is not
sent quickly,” Kumar said.
Later that night, coronavirus
patients began dying in the hospital’s intensive and critical care units.
Around midnight, with the help of police and other officials, a nearby
government-run hospital diverted some of its supply to Jaipur Golden. It took
another hour to fill the tanks and maintain the desired pressure, Kumar said.
The hospital still has not received
enough supplies at a time to last more than half a day. Even after losing so
many patients, “we are not sure if we can avoid a repeat of a similar
situation,” he said.
For relatives of those who have
died, there is immense anguish — and anger. Atul Kapoor, a 40-year-old
businessman, was being treated in the hospital’s intensive care unit but had
showed signs of improvement in recent days, said Aman Joshi, his brother-in-law.
Joshi said the family learned about
what happened on the news. They rushed to the hospital, where they were told
that Kapoor had died. Hours later, Joshi broke down as he contemplated his
brother-in-law’s final moments.
“He didn’t die of coronavirus. He
was murdered,” Joshi said. “It is a complete collapse, as if there is no one
running the country.”
Irfan reported from Srinagar. Niha
Masih in New Delhi and Miriam Berger in Washington contributed to this report.
