India's seven-day average of new cases hits record high

BENGALURU/DELHI • India's coronavirus crisis showed scant sign of easing yesterday, with a seven-day average of new cases at a record high and international health authorities warning that the country's variant of the virus poses a global concern.

The country's daily coronavirus cases rose by 329,942, while deaths from the disease rose by 3,876, according to the Health Ministry. The total number of infections is now 22.99 million, while total fatalities rose to 249,992.

India leads the world in the daily average number of new deaths reported, accounting for one in every three deaths worldwide each day, according to a Reuters tally.

The seven-day average of new cases is at a record high of 390,995.

The World Health Organisation said the coronavirus variant first identified in the country last year was being classified as a variant of global concern, with some preliminary studies showing that it spreads more easily.

"We are classifying this as a variant of concern at a global level," Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO technical lead on Covid-19, told a briefing in Geneva on Monday. "There is some available information to suggest increased transmissibility."

Nations around the globe have sent oxygen cylinders and other medical gear to support India's crisis, but many hospitals around the country are struggling with a shortage of the life-saving equipment.

Eleven people died late on Monday at a government hospital in Tirupati, a city in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, due to a delay in the arrival of a tanker carrying oxygen, a government official said.

"There were issues with oxygen pressure due to low availability. It all happened within a span of five minutes," said Mr M. Harinarayan, the district's top bureaucrat, on Monday. But he added that the SVR Ruia hospital now had sufficient oxygen.

Sixteen faculty members and a number of retired teachers and employees who lived on the campus of Aligarh Muslim University had died from the virus.

The Indian government has told doctors to look out for signs of mucormycosis, or "black fungus", in Covid-19 patients as hospitals report a rise in cases of the rare but potentially fatal infection.

The disease, which can lead to blackening or discolouration of the nose, blurred or double vision, chest pain, breathing difficulties and coughing blood, is strongly linked to diabetes.

And diabetes can in turn be exacerbated by steroids such as dexamethasone, used to treat severe Covid-19.

Doctors in the country have had to warn against the practice of using cow dung in the belief it will ward off Covid-19, saying there is no scientific evidence for its effectiveness and that it risks spreading other diseases.

Meanwhile, dozens of bodies believed to be those of Covid-19 victims have washed up on the banks of the Ganges River in northern India, officials said on Monday.

Local official Ashok Kumar said that about 40 corpses washed up in Buxar district near the border between Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, two of India's poorest states.

"We have directed concerned officials to dispose of all bodies, to either bury or cremate them," Mr Kumar told AFP.

Locals believed the bodies had been dumped in the river because cremation sites were overwhelmed or because relatives could not afford wood for funeral pyres.

REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE