As COVID-19 cases seem to go down in the Western world, the same cannot be said for India, who is currently experiencing a recent resurgence in cases. In this article, written by Alexa Mendez, we will explore India's worsening crisis and reasons that contributed to the surge. Now over a year into lockdown in the United States and most of the Western world, the pandemic has begun to subside with an influx of vaccinations and adequate responses from the majority of Western governments. For the global South, however, this is not the case. Particularly in India, large political rallies and lack of healthcare infrastructure and resources have worsened the COVID-19 crisis, setting record death rates due to the pandemic. Though India experienced a steady fall in Coronavirus cases in mid-September, the end of February marked a significant, shocking uptick in cases. This month, the rate of increase of COVID cases has surpassed the rate of the initial first wave.
Particularly in Delhi, there is a severe shortage of oxygen in hospitals. The sudden surge in cases has left the hospitals vastly overwhelmed. The majority of hospitals are out of oxygen supplies and beds, causing some to even shut down and not admit new patients. Dr. Sudhanshu Bankata, executive director of a leading hospital in New Delhi confirmed that “every hospital is running out [of oxygen]. [India is] running out” [4]. Even when oxygen tankers make their trips in attempts to deliver oxygen to hospitals, they often fail to make it on time [3]. A large number of people have died while waiting for oxygen to arrive, and the majority of ICU beds in Delhi hospitals are full. An official from the Jaipur Golden Hospital in Delhi stated that 20 people died overnight due to a lack of oxygen [2]. This lack of supplies and adequate health infrastructure has cost many Indians their lives.
Even with extremely high death rates reported officially, workers from cremation sites state that the official numbers are not nearly as much as the number of bodies they receive each day. Many cremation grounds have never-ending fires, “mass cremations” of those who lost their lives due to COVID. One cremation worker says that he is instructed by his bosses to write off the cause of death as “sickness” instead of COVID-19, indubitably affecting the number of reported deaths. Analysts report that amid the COVID frenzy, politicians and hospital administrations may be reporting the wrong number of deaths. Bhramar Mukherjee, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan who has been following India closely states that “the true number of deaths is two to five times what is being reported” [5]. Along with the likely false reporting in the number of deaths, the government of New Delhi has order Twitter to censor or remove tweets criticizing its response to COVID-19. According to Yahoo! News, “New Delhi made an emergency order to Twitter to censor over 50 tweets in the country, Twitter disclosed on Lumen database, a Harvard University project. The social network has complied with the request, and withheld those tweets from users in India” [7]. This Twitter ban is extremely detrimental to young Indian activists, as well as those from other countries attempting to help the situation since their primary mode of communication is social media. Through Twitter and Instagram, young organizers in India inform each other about new leads concerning the delivery of oxygen tanks and any open beds in hospitals across the country. One Indian activist stated on Instagram that the government is doing “absolutely nothing, avoiding the severity of the pandemic” while they should be “making makeshift hospitals out of [India’s] stadiums, imposing strict lockdowns, paying the working classes to stay at home, [and] providing free vaccines to everybody” [1]. Work Cited: @frogwithabat. “Our government is absolutely incompetent.” Instagram, 23 Apr. 2021, www.instagram.com/p/COAkwWUn9sG/ BBC News. “India Covid Surge: Hospitals Send SOS as Record Deaths Registered.” BBC News, 24 Apr. 2021, www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56870410?fbclid=IwAR0vcrSL0XeATQCKzb3TF90zTpHQp_l68vsOBgZYv_C-HpM6Ob6iSb2KtXw. Biswas, Soutik. “India Covid: Families Appeal for Help in Delhi’s Oxygen Shortage.” BBC News, 24 Apr. 2021, www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-56872266?at_campaign=64&at_custom4=F3B4F748-A4F3-11EB-8355-2EEC4744363C&at_custom2=twitter&at_medium=custom7&at_custom1=%5Bpost+type%5D. CBS News. “Authorities in India Scramble to Get Oxygen Tanks to COVID-19 Patients Amid Record-Breaking Crush of Cases.” CBS News, 24 Apr. 2021, www.cbsnews.com/news/india-covid-19-oxygen-record-cases/?intcid=CNM-00-10abd1h. Gettleman, Jeffrey, et al. “As Covid-19 Devastates India, Deaths Go Undercounted.” The New York Times, 24 Apr. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/04/24/world/asia/india-coronavirus-deaths.html. Menon, Shruti, and Jack Goodman. “India Covid Crisis: Did Election Rallies Help Spread Virus?” BBC News, 24 Apr. 2021, www.bbc.com/news/56858980. Singh, Manish. “India Orders Twitter to Take Down Tweets Critical of Its Coronavirus Handling.” Yahoo! News, 24 Apr. 2021, news.yahoo.com/india-orders-twitter-down-tweets-151222152.html.
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Welcome to our blog, Medquity!Here we will post extra articles on health disparities to display the profound health inequities in our healthcare system. These are updated every other weekend, so check back regularly! Archives
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