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 In a letter, Gandhi implored Prime Minister Narendra Modi to prepare
for another national lockdown, accelerate a country-wide vaccination
programme and scientifically track the virus and its mutations.
Gandhi said the world's second-most populous nation had a
responsibility in "a globalised and interconnected world" to stop
the "explosive" growth of COVID-19 within its borders.
"India is home to one out of every six human beings on the planet.
The pandemic has demonstrated that our size, genetic diversity and
complexity make India fertile ground for the virus to rapidly
mutate, transforming itself into a more contagious and more
dangerous form," wrote Gandhi.
"Allowing the uncontrollable spread of the virus in our country will
be devastating not only for our people but also for the rest of the
world."
India's highly infectious COVID-19 variant B.1.617 has already
spread to other countries such as Britain, forcing nations to cut or
restrict movements from India.
In the past week, India has reported an extra 1.5 million new
infections and record daily death tolls as its hospitals run out of
beds and medical oxygen. Since the start of the pandemic, it has
reported 21.49 million cases and 234,083 deaths. It currently has
3.6 million active cases.
Modi has been widely criticised for not acting sooner to suppress
the second wave, after religious festivals and political rallies
drew tens of thousands of people in recent weeks and became "super
spreader" events.
His government has also been criticised for lifting social
restrictions too soon following the first wave and for delays in the
country's vaccination programme, which medical experts say is
India's only hope of controlling the second COVID-19 wave.
While India is the world's biggest vaccine maker, it is struggling
to produce and distribute enough doses to stem the wave of COVID-19.
Modi has stressed that Indian states must keep up vaccination rates.
Although the country has administered at least 157 million vaccine
doses, its rate of inoculation has fallen sharply
https://graphics.reuters.com/
HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS/INDIA/
jbyprwkawve/chart.png in recent days.
"After having achieved a rate of around 4 million a day, we are now
down to 2.5 million per day due to vaccine shortages," Amartya
Lahiri, an economics professor at University of British Columbia was
quoted as saying in the Mint newspaper.
"The 5 million a day target is the lower bound of what we have to
aim for, since even at that rate, it will take a year for us to get
everyone two doses. The situation unfortunately is very grim."
RECORD INFECTIONS
India reported another record daily rise in coronavirus cases,
414,188, on Friday, bringing total new cases for the week to 1.57
million. Deaths from COVID-19 rose by 3,915 to 234,083.
Medical experts say the real extent of COVID-19 in India is five to
10 times the official tallies.
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 India's healthcare system is
crumbling under the weight of patients, with
hospitals running out of beds and medical
oxygen. Morgues and crematoriums can not handle
the number of dead and makeshift funeral pyres
burn in parks and carparks.
Prominent U.S. disease modeller Chris Murray,
from the University of Washington, said the
sheer magnitude of infections in India in a
short period of time suggests an "escape
variant" may be overpowering any prior immunity
from natural infections.
Infections are now spreading from overcrowded
cities to remote rural villages that are home to
nearly 70% of the 1.3 billion population.
Although northern and western India bear the
brunt of the disease, southern India now seems
to be turning into the new epicentre. The share
of the five southern states in the country's
daily surge in infections rose from 28% to 33%
in the first seven days of May, data shows.
In the southern city of Chennai, only one in a
hundred oxygen supported beds and two in a
hundred beds in intensive care units (ICUs) were
vacant on Thursday, from a vacancy rate of over
20% each two weeks ago, government data showed.
In India's tech capital Bengaluru, also in the
south, only 23 of the 590 beds in ICUs were
vacant, and only 1 in 50 beds with a ventilator
were vacant, a situation officials say points to
an impending crisis.
The test-positivity rate — the percentage of
people tested who are found to have the disease
— in the city of 12.5 million has tripled to
almost 39% as of Wednesday, from about 13% two
weeks ago, data showed.
Bengaluru has 325,000 active COVID-19 cases,
with demand for ICU and high-dependency unit (HDU)
beds up more than 20 fold, said H. M. Prasanna,
president of the Private Hospitals and Nursing
Homes Association in Karnataka state, which
includes Bengaluru.
"Every patient coming to the hospital needs a
ICU or a HDU bed...that is why patients are
running from one hospital to another searching
for an ICU bed," he said.
"There is also short supply of medical
oxygen...Most of the small hospitals now who
can't procure oxygen on a daily basis are
refusing to admit COVID patients."
(Reporting by Tanvi Mehta and Neha Arora in
Delhi, Shilpa Jamkhandikar in Mumbai, Sudarshan
Varadhan in Chennai, Sachin Ravikumar in
Bengaluru, Writing by Michael Perry;Editing by
Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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