Covid Pandemic: Indian hospitals grapple with acute oxygen shortage

Hospitals in India yesterday launched desperate appeals for oxygen as the nation's Covid crisis spiralled, while Japan issued a state of emergency in some areas just three months before the Olympics are due to open.    

Covid-19 surges are placing a major strain on healthcare systems across the world, with no end in sight to a pandemic that has killed more than three million people.

Governments are desperate to accelerate vaccine campaigns to help their countries -- and economies -- recover from the virus, and the EU yesterday said it would have enough vaccines to inoculate 70 percent of adults in July.

The announcement came as Europe's medicines regulator said the benefits of the controversy-plagued AstraZeneca vaccine increase with age -- and reiterated that it should be taken despite links to rare blood clots.

But in India, healthcare facilities sounded the alarm on oxygen supplies for patients on ventilator support.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose government has been criticised for relaxing virus curbs too quickly, met chief ministers of the worst-affected states.

Later he said the government was making a "continuous effort" to increase oxygen supplies, including steps to divert industrial oxygen.

Modi asked states to work together to meet the needs for medicine and oxygen, and stop hoarding and black marketeering.

"Every state should ensure that no oxygen tanker, whether it is meant for any state, is stopped or gets stranded," he was quoted as saying in a statement.

To combat the recent surge, India yesterday deployed its air force's transport planes to airlift oxygen cylinders, essential medicines and health workers, reported our New Delhi correspondent.

The C-17 and IL-76 transport aircraft of IAF have started airlifting big empty oxygen tankers from their place of use to the filling stations across the country to speed up the distribution of oxygen.

India also decided to import 23 portable oxygen generation plants and containers from Germany within a week. Each plant has a capacity to produce 2,400 litres an hour.

India's desperate efforts to boost oxygen availability came on a day when the country reported over three lakh Covid-19 cases for the second day in a row, adding a record 332,730 cases in the last 24 hours, according to the health ministry. As many as 2,263 people also died of Covid-19 in the last 24 hours, mounting the coronavirus death toll to 186,920.

Delhi reported more than 26,000 new cases and 306 deaths, or about one fatality every five minutes, the fastest since the pandemic began.

Medical oxygen and beds have become scarce, with major hospitals putting up notices saying they have no room for any more patients and police fanning out to secure oxygen supplies.

"We regret to inform that we are suspending any new patient admissions in all our hospitals in Delhi ... till oxygen supplies stabilise," Max Healthcare, which runs a network of hospitals, said on Twitter as it appealed for oxygen.

Bhramar Mukherjee, a professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of Michigan in the United States, said it seemed as if there was no social safety net for Indians.

"Everyone is fighting for their own survival and trying to protect their loved ones. This is hard to watch," he said.

In New Delhi, people losing loved ones are turning to makeshift facilities for mass burials and cremations as funeral services get swamped.

Amid the despair, recriminations have begun.

Health experts say India got complacent in the winter, when new cases were running at about 10,000 a day and seemed to be under control, and lifted restrictions to allow big gatherings.

"Indians let down their collective guard," Zarir Udwadia, a pulmonologist on Maharashtra's task force, wrote in the Times of India newspaper.

"We heard self-congratulatory declarations of victory from our leaders, now cruelly exposed as mere self-assured hubris."

The government ordered an extensive lockdown last year in the early stages of the pandemic, but it has been wary of the economic costs and upheaval to the lives of legions of poor migrant workers after any tight reimposition of curbs.

Modi has said another lockdown would be a last resort.

A more infectious variant of the virus that originated in India may have helped accelerate the surge, experts said.

Compounding the misery, 13 Covid patients died in Mumbai when a fire broke out in their hospital -- the latest in a string of blazes at Indian healthcare facilities.

Many parts of the country have now tightened restrictions, with the capital in lockdown and all non-essential services banned in Maharashtra. The northern state of Uttar Pradesh, home to 240 million people, goes into a shutdown this weekend.

Other countries have closed their doors to India, fearing the new virus strain. Britain, Canada, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates have banned flights from India.

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus yesterday said he was concerned about the growing case load in India.

"The situation in India is a devastating reminder of what the virus can do," he told a virtual briefing in Geneva.