Gasping for air

NEW DELHI • India yesterday posted the world's biggest one-day jump in coronavirus cases, with the number surging beyond 300,000 as a deadlier second wave showed no signs of abating.

The South Asian nation, which has the second-largest outbreak globally, reported 314,835 new infections, pushing the total to almost 16 million cases.

The United States, the worst-hit country, saw a peak of 314,312 cases last Dec 21 and has reported more than 300,000 infections on only two days since the onset of the pandemic. Cases in the country are now on a downward trend, helped in part by aggressive vaccination drives.

The deteriorating situation in India shows how the health crisis has shifted firmly to the developing world, where variants are threatening containment measures and there are a lack of vaccines.

Coronavirus-related deaths in the country jumped to 184,657. India has administered more than 132 million vaccine doses - enough to cover about 4.8 per cent of its vast 1.3 billion population.

The fresh outbreak threatens to derail the Indian economy that had just begun to recover after last year's nationwide lockdown pushed it into a historic recession. A new coronavirus variant with a double mutation has also been detected locally, and concerns are growing that it is driving the new wave that is overwhelming hospitals and crematoriums.

New Delhi's largest hospital chain operator rushed to court on Wednesday night to seek critical oxygen supply after 1,400 Covid-19 patients across the Indian capital were put at risk due to "dangerously low" supply levels.

The two back-to-back emergency hearings ended late that night after an oxygen tanker finally left for one branch of the Max Hospital, which had more than 250 virus patients in a critical state and the lowest level of crucial oxygen.

The Delhi High Court's two-judge panel headed by Justice Vipin Sanghi expressed "shock and dismay" over the government's neglect and directed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration to "beg, borrow, steal" but ensure adequate oxygen supply for hospitals in the country.

The court also asked the federal government to divert all oxygen from industries for medical use if needed.

The late-night courtroom drama, with state and federal government lawyers bickering over oxygen supplies to the national capital, which has among the best healthcare infrastructure in the country, is a grim indicator of a worse situation in the hinterlands.

These days, social media posts in the country are no longer about cheeky photos, funny memes or political jokes. Instead, frantic calls to save lives are flooding Twitter and Instagram with desperate calls for help to secure medicines, hospital beds, and oxygen cylinders.

On Mr Bharath Pottekkat's Instagram feed, one message screams: "Mumbai please help! Lungs damaged due to pneumonia infection. In need of ICU bed."

Another reads: "Plasma urgently required for treatment of Covid patient in Max Hospital, Delhi."

Yet another says: "Urgently needed Tocilizumab injection. Please DM if you know of stock in and around Mumbai."

New appeals land with every refresh.

"My brain can't handle the social media overload," said Mr Pottekkat, 20, a Delhi law student. "I can't process what I'm reading. I feel numb."

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Telegram are all inundated with messages from distraught family members and friends begging for everything from hospital beds to medicines, CT scans, doorstep Covid-19 tests, and even food for the elderly in quarantine.

The surge has forced both India's financial and political capitals - Mumbai and New Delhi respectively - to impose restrictions on movement, with the latter mandating a six-day strict lockdown that started on Tuesday.

One particular Instagram post rattled Mr Pottekkat. A woman at her mother's bedside described an apocalyptic scene at a hospital in the northern city of Lucknow, where people got into a scuffle to lay their hands on a fresh batch of oxygen cylinders that just arrived.

Ms Barkha Dutt, a journalist, pointed out the shortage of crematoriums around the country, tweeting pictures of a cremation ground in Surat, a city in Gujarat.

Nowhere is the desperation more evident than in the social media feed of Mr Ranjan Pai, the billionaire owner and co-founder of Manipal Education & Medical Group, which runs the country's second-largest hospital chain - the TPG and Temasek-backed Manipal Health Enterprises.

Mr Pai is deluged with messages from hundreds of people, mostly strangers, asking him for ICU beds, oxygen supplies and Covid-19 drugs. The 7,000 beds in his 27-hospital chain are full.

"We were caught off-guard," Mr Pai said. "No country is equipped to handle a surge this fast and this severe."

There is, however, a bright side to this mayhem as responders - from students to technology professionals and non-profit organisations - are rallying to supply meals, circulate information on availability of hospital beds or the antiviral medication Remdesivir.

Those who put together crowd-sourced, authentic information on social media are today's heroes said Mr Vikas Chawla, co-founder of the Chennai-headquartered digital agency, Social Beat. "It takes just a few people to step forward and make it happen," he said.

BLOOMBERG