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NEW DELHI: India’s coronavirus infections rose by 346,786 on Saturday, setting a new world record for the third consecutive day.
India is in the grip of a rampaging second wave of the pandemic, hitting a rate of one COVID-19 death in just under every four minutes in Delhi as the capital’s underfunded health system buckles.
The government has deployed military planes and trains to get oxygen from the far corners of the country to Delhi as overwhelmed hospitals urged for oxygen supplies.
“Please help us get oxygen, there will be a tragedy here,” Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The crisis is also being felt in other parts of the country, with several hospitals issuing public notices that they don’t have medical oxygen. Local media reported fresh cases of people dying in the cities of Jaipur and Amritsar for lack of the gas.
India surpassed the US record of 297,430 single-day infections in the world on Thursday, making it the global epicentre of a pandemic that is waning in many other countries. However, COVID-19 deaths across India rose by 2,624 over the past 24 hours, the highest daily rate for the country so far.
The country has now recorded a total of 16.6 million cases, including 189,544 deaths. Crematoriums across Delhi said they were full up and asked grieving families to wait.
Health experts said India became complacent in the winter, when new cases were running at about 10,000 a day and seemed to be under control, lifting restrictions and allowed the resumption of big gatherings.
Others said that it could also be a more dangerous variant of the virus coursing where people live in close proximity, often six to a room.
WHO emergencies director Mike Ryan said reducing transmission in India would be a “very difficult task” but the government was working on limiting mixing between people, which he said was essential.
