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 Deaths in the past 24 hours also jumped to a record 2,263, the
health ministry said, while officials across northern and western
India, including the capital, New Delhi, warned most hospitals were
full and running out of oxygen.
The surge in cases came as a fire in a hospital in a suburb of
Mumbai treating COVID-19 patients killed 13 people, the latest
accident to hit a facility crowded with virus sufferers.
On Wednesday, 22 patients died at a public hospital in the western
state of Maharashtra when their oxygen supply ran out due to a
leaking tank, after at least nine had died in a hospital fire last
month in the state's capital of Mumbai.
"It is grim. It is grave ... there is an extreme shortage of ICU
beds," T.S. Singh Deo, health minister of the eastern state of
Chhattisgarh, told Reuters.
"We'll need to be very careful in the rural areas. If it spreads
there, then it will be out of control."
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.
Daily infections hit 332,730, up from 314,835 the previous day, when
India set a record that surpassed a U.S. figure of 297,430 new cases
set in January. The U.S. tally has since fallen.
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.
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 "Everyone is fighting for their
own survival and trying to protect their loved
ones. This is hard to watch," he said.
'SELF-ASSURED HUBRIS'
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.
Britain, Canada, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates have banned
flights from India.
India, a major vaccine producer, has begun a vaccination campaign
but only a tiny fraction of its population of 1.39 billion has
received a dose, with experts saying supplies are scarce.
"It is tragic, the mismanagement," Kaushik Basu, a professor at
Cornell University and a former economic adviser to the Indian
government, said on Twitter.
"For a country known to be the pharmacy of the world, to have less
than 1.5% of the population vaccinated is a failure difficult to
fathom."
(Additional reporting by Sachin Ravikumar, Devjyot Ghoshal, Aditya
Kalra, Anuron Kumar Mitra, Nivedita Bhattacharjee; Writing by
Sanjeev Miglani and Richard Pullin; Editing by Robert Birsel and
Clarence Fernandez)
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