A new wave of the pandemic has totally overwhelmed the country's healthcare services and has caused crematoriums to operate day and night as the number of victims continues to spiral out of control. With recorded cases crossing 300,000 a day, India has more than 2 million active cases of Covid-19, the second-highest number in the world after the U.S. NEW DELHI, INDIA - APRIL 24: A man performs the last rites of his relative who died of the Covid-19 coronavirus disease as other funeral pyres are seen burning during a mass cremation held at a crematorium on Apin New Delhi, India. Helplessness, frustration and anger toward the government’s slow response is spreading among people on the ground – especially those facing the deluge of death every day. For some of the hardest-hit cities, such as New Delhi, the lack of immediate help and accessible resources means the bodies will keep piling up until assistance arrives. International aid began arriving on Tuesday, with countries around the world sending oxygen cylinders, ventilators, medication and other essential supplies.īut these supplies need time to be distributed and oxygen plants need to be built.
INDIA COVID PORTABLE
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has approved the procurement of 100,000 portable oxygen concentrators, in addition to hundreds of new oxygen generation plants. Numerous states and cities have implemented new restrictions and shut down businesses in an attempt to contain the outbreak. India’s government is scrambling to take action as the virus spreads. This is the time to work for the nation, for humanity, and save lives.”Īn aerial view of the Seemapuri crematorium on April 29.
“I am tired – but this is not the time to get tired. “We have cremated 55 bodies in the last five hours … (It) will be 100 by the end of the day,” he said on Wednesday morning. In between building the additional pyres and bringing out bodies, Shunty, the crematorium head, sits with grieving families to offer comfort and support. At the Seemapuri crematorium, a number of exhausted volunteers slumped against a wall, getting a little precious sleep before continuing with their work. “We start getting bodies in the morning and they keep coming in one after the other,” said Suman Kumar Gupta, an official at Delhi’s Nigambodh Ghat cremation site, on Wednesday.įor workers and volunteers at the crematorium, handling hundreds of bodies daily and witnessing a constant outpouring of anguish takes a heavy toll. This is double the official daily death toll for the city, and an indicator there may be a major underreporting problem. More than 3,600 people died.ĭelhi’s facilities have been cremating more than 600 bodies daily for the past week, according to the mayor of the North Delhi Municipal Corporation. India reported almost 380,000 new infections on Thursday, marking yet another global record for the highest single-day case count.
“I think of the families that need cremation grounds, where bodies have been lying on the floor.”īurning funeral pyres of Covid-19 victims at a crematorium in India's capital on April 27. “Despite my devastation, I was luckier than most Indians,” Dutt added. “We had to call the police to cremate my father.” “When we went to cremate him, there was no space at the cremation ground – there was a physical fight that erupted between multiple families,” she said Wednesday.
Many see no choice, as they jockey for space at crowded crematoriums.Ĭremation is considered an important part of Hindu funeral rites, due to the belief the body must be destroyed for the soul to proceed to reincarnation.īarkha Dutt, a columnist at the Washington Post, lost her father to Covid-19 this week after he was ferried to the hospital on a faulty oxygen cylinder. In the meantime, families are having to pay for the wood to burn their relatives’ bodies. On Tuesday, Jai Prakash, the mayor of North Delhi, wrote a letter to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, asking that the forest department provide a steady supply. So many fires have been lit in New Delhi that wood stocks are running low. An aerial image of a crematorium in New Delhi, India, on April 29.
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