Coronavirus: Global situation
New Delhi says oxygen supply stable, will share surplus with other parts of India
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A villager being treated at a makeshift Covid-19 clinic in Mewla Gopalgarh in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh on Sunday. The rise of new virus infections in India has slowed, but with the virus spreading in low-income rural areas, the overall crisis shows no sign of abating.
PHOTO: REUTERS
NEW DELHI • After a severe oxygen shortage in New Delhi led to scores of people dying in hospitals, officials said there is now enough supply in the Indian capital to start sharing a surplus of the life-saving gas with needier parts of the country.
For weeks, New Delhi officials had appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a larger share of India's oxygen reserves, with the battle for air ending up in the nation's highest court.
Last Thursday, just days after receiving the amount it had requested, New Delhi's second-highest official, Mr Manish Sisodia, said the city's demand had fallen and its excess supply should be reallocated.
"The number of cases is coming down, hospital bed occupancy is coming down, and demand for oxygen, too, is down," Mr Sisodia told The New York Times.
It was a sign that the crisis in the capital might be reaching a peak.
The oxygen shortage in New Delhi began in April and has been linked to dozens of deaths, in and out of hospitals.
Thousands of people in the city of 20 million stood in line at oxygen refilling stations, lugging cylinders into hospitals for friends and family or hoarding them at home in case the need arose.
The rise of new virus infections in India has slowed. But, in a pattern seen in nation after nation battered by the virus, death rates often plateau a few weeks later. And with the virus spreading in low-income rural areas, the overall crisis shows no sign of abating.
Yesterday, India reported a further decline in new coronavirus cases but daily deaths remained above 4,000 and experts said the data was unreliable due to a lack of testing in rural areas where the virus is spreading fast.
For months now, nowhere in the world has been hit harder than India by the pandemic, as a new strain of the virus fuelled a surge in infections that has risen to more than 400,000 daily.
Even with a downturn over the past few days, experts said there was no certainty that infections had peaked, with alarm growing both at home and abroad over the highly contagious B.1.617 variant first found in India.
The Modi government has faced criticism over its response to the surge in cases and the lack of vaccines. India has fully vaccinated just over 40.4 million people, or 2.9 per cent of its population.
A top virologist told Reuters on Sunday that he had resigned from a forum of scientific advisers set up by the government to detect variants of the coronavirus.
Dr Shahid Jameel, chair of the scientific advisory group, declined to say why he had resigned but said he was concerned that the authorities were not paying enough attention to the evidence as they set policy.
NYTIMES, REUTERS
