The catastrophe that is India Covid 19 crisis

[Imagine]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/india-has-covid-19-hospitals-so-overburdened-that-inpatients-want-to-get-out/ar-BB1giEKp

28 mins ago

India has Covid-19 hospitals so overburdened that inpatients want to get out

 

For three days, Goldi Patel, 25, went from hospital to hospital in New Delhi's oppressive summer heat, frantically trying to find one that would keep her husband breathing.

Four hospitals turned away Patel, who is seven months pregnant with the couple's first child, before she finally found one that would take him. But the level of care at Sardar Patel Covid Care Centre and Hospital, a makeshift pandemic facility on the outskirts of the capital, is so lacking that her husband is begging to leave.

 

Around Sadanand Patel, 30, people are dying. He has barely any contact with doctors, and limited medicine. With 80% of his lungs already infected, he's terrified of what happens if his condition gets worse.

 

There is limited medicine, and Sadanand said he had only interacted with a doctor once or twice in three days since he was admitted last Tuesday. He watched two men in beds nearby scream for medicine only to die within hours when their oxygen appeared to run out.

[Imagine]

https://news.yahoo.com/india-covid-inside-delhis-oxygen-225849721.html   Mon, May 3, 2021,

 

India Covid: Hospitals plead for help as more patients die

 

The crisis started two weeks ago but shows no signs of abating.

 Outside hospitals, families of patients who can't find a bed are struggling to get hold of portable cylinders - sometimes standing in queues for up to 12 hours.

 

One doctor described the situation as frightening, explaining: "Once you've used up your main tank, there is nothing to fall back on."

The situation is worse still in small hospitals that don't have storage tanks and have to rely on big cylinders.

 

'It's a battle every day'

 

Dr Gautam Singh, who runs the Shri Ram Singh hospital, says "It's a battle we are fighting every day."  "Half of my hospital staff are on the road with cylinders to get them filled every day, going from one place to another."

 

 

A woman reacts in discomfort after she arrived to receive free oxygen distributed as a service by a Gurdwara (Sikh holy place) for coronavirus patients amid scarcity in the city on May 01, 2021 in New Delhi,

[Imagine]

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/andhra-pradesh/ap-strain-at-least-15-times-more-virulent/article34474035.ece

UPDATED: MAY 04, 2021

 

COVID-19 | A.P. strain at least 15 times more virulent

The new variant has shorter incubation period and the progress of the disease is much rapid. Experts say the new prevalent variant, which is being called as the AP variant as it was first discovered in Kurnool ( judicial capital of Andhra Pradesh state)  is at least 15 times more virulent than the earlier ones, and may be even stronger than the Indian variants of B1.617 and B1.618.

 

Confirming the enhanced power of the virus, District COVID Special Officer and Principal of Andhra Medical College P.V. Sudhakar said, “We have observed that the new variant has shorter incubation period and the progress of the disease is much rapid. In the earlier cases, a patient affected with the virus would take at least a week to reach the hypoxia or dyspnea stage. But in the present context, patients are reaching the serious condition stage within three or four days. And that is why there is heavy pressure on beds with oxygen or ICU beds,” he said.

 

“Most essentially, none is spared, as we have observed that it is affecting the younger population in a big way, including those who are fitness freaks and have high immunity levels. It is also observed that cytokine storm is occurring faster, and some are responding to treatment and some are not,” 

Edited May 5, 2021 by Mclove

[Imagine]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/11/world/asia/covid-india-ganges-oxygen.html    May 11, 2021

 

Covid Desperation Is Spreading Across India

Infections, deaths and breakdowns that began in big cities a few weeks ago are rapidly advancing into rural areas, unleashing deep fear in places with little medical safety net.

 

NEW DELHI — Dozens of bodies washed up on the banks of the Ganges this week, most likely the remains of people who perished from Covid-19.

 

States in southern India have threatened to stop sharing medical oxygen with each other, fiercely protective about holding on to whatever they have as their hospitals swell with the sick and infections skyrocket.

And at one hospital in Andhra Pradesh, a rural state in southeastern India, furious relatives went on a rampage in the intensive care unit after lifesaving oxygen suddenly ran out

 

Positivity rates are soaring in those states, and public health experts say that the rising numbers most likely fall far short of giving the true picture in places where sickness and deaths caused by Covid-19 are harder to track.

 

Every day the Indian media delivers a heavy dose of turmoil and grief. On Tuesday (May 11 2021), it was televised images of distraught relatives furiously beating the chests of loved ones who had died after the oxygen ran out, and headlines including  “As Deaths Go Up 10 Fold, Worrying Signs from Smaller States.”

[Sylv]

I found out today that one of my co-workers who is currently on maternity leave went to visit her family in India two months ago, and now can't get back to Canada. She said that they are on the opposite side of the country from the major breakout, and are being very careful, but I just can't understand why she took the risk of going in the first place. I hope she gets home safely, whenever that may be.

 

 

 

 

[Imagine]

In this small country where there are a sizeable community of Indians whose ancestors immigrated from India more than a century ago. Mostly from Sri Lanka, Tamil Nadu  and Bengal  states which could be where your colleague may have come from. The eastern part of the Sub Indian continent. I have noticed that Indians and Sri Lankans on a whole are a close knit kind of community. Any chance they get, they will want to be in their own native country. 

Even here the ethnic Indians tend to mingle only among themselves and they have a very strong attachment to their motherland. I don't blame them because they are by nature a very warm and voluble race. That may explain their high intelligence and EQ.

 

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/05/07/asia/asia-covid-hotspots-dst-intl-hnk/index.html    May 8, 2021

Quote

 

The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday that India had accounted for nearly half of all global infections and a quarter of deaths reported in the past week.

But cases have also skyrocketed in countries around India, from Nepal in the north to Sri Lanka and the Maldives in the south. And it's not just India's neighbors -- further away in Southeast Asia, infections are also surging in Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia.

 

 

 

[Imagine]

https://news.yahoo.com/india-braces-powerful-cyclone-amid-052837140.html

 

 

Mon, May 17, 2021

 

A powerful cyclone that emerged in the Arabian Sea made landfall on India's western coast on Monday, hours after authorities evacuated hundreds of thousands of people and suspended COVID-19 vaccinations in one state.

Edited May 18, 2021 by Mclove