Ramanan Laxminarayan writes:

A lethal, fast-paced second wave of the coronavirus pandemic has brought India’s health care systems to the verge of collapse and is putting millions of lives and livelihoods at risk.

On Sunday and Monday, the country recorded more than 270,000 and 259,000 cases, respectively, of Covid-19, a staggering increase from about 11,000 cases per day in the second week of February. Reported coronavirus infections shot up from about 20,000 per day in mid-March to more than 200,000 by mid-April.

The newspapers and social media are scrolls of horror and failure of the health system. There are reports of lines of ambulances with patients waiting outside the largest Covid facility in Ahmedabad in the western state of Gujarat because ventilator beds and oxygen had run out.

On Friday in the northern city of Lucknow, Vinay Srivastava, a 65-year-old journalist, shared his falling oxygen levels on Twitter, tagging government authorities for help. Overburdened hospitals and laboratories wouldn’t take calls from his family. The last tweet from Mr. Srivastava’s handle described his oxygen saturation level at 52, way below the 95 percent, which is considered normal. Nobody helped. He died on Saturday.

At a crematory in the central city of Bhopal, residents reported having not seen as many cremations since 1984, when a gas leak from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in the city killed around 5,000 people. On Tuesday around 11 a.m. in Delhi, the national capital, with more than 18 million people, only 40 I.C.U. beds were available for Covid-19 patients.

India has had a total of 15.3 million reported coronavirus cases to date, with reported deaths to date of 180,000 people. A survey funded by the leading government body for medical research, indicated that there were roughly 30 infections corresponding to each reported case. [Continue reading…]