Situation grimmer as India sees alarming spike in COVID cases

The crisis unfolding in India is most visceral in its graveyards and crematoriums, and in heartbreaking images of gasping patients dying on their way to hospitals due to lack of oxygen.

New Delhi: India continues to suffer the effects of a brutal wave of COVID infections and deaths, with people desperate for dwindling supplies of oxygen and funeral pyres burning constantly.

The latest figures include 349,691 confirmed cases over the past day, bringing India’s total to more than 16.9 million, behind only the United States.

The Health Ministry reported another 2,767 deaths in the past 24 hours, pushing India’s COVID-19 fatalities to 192,311.

Experts say that toll could be a huge undercount, as suspected cases are not included, and many deaths from the infection are being attributed to underlying conditions.

Footage from U.K. broadcaster Sky showed residents of New Delhi desperately queuing up for oxygen canisters to help people suffering the effects of COVID.

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"Whatever the guy asks I'll pay for it. So I have no clue how much amount he is going to ask. When my number is going to come, whatever he asks for, I'll pay for it," one man said while waiting to buy oxygen, alongside several others.

The crisis unfolding in India is most visceral in its graveyards and crematoriums, and in heartbreaking images of gasping patients dying on their way to hospitals due to lack of oxygen.

Footage from a Sky News report showed a converted sports complex in New Delhi, which was said to have 900 beds to help with hospital shortages but was closed just days after it opened.

Now outside the hospital, a sign reads "Oxygen beds are not available".

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Burial grounds in New Delhi are running out of space and bright, glowing funeral pyres light up the night sky in other badly hit cities.

Workers in open-air crematoriums work constantly to cope with the number of dead arriving, while others disinfect bodies in waiting ambulances.

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Caught off-guard by the latest deadly spike, the federal government has asked industrialists to increase the production of oxygen and other life-saving drugs in short supply.

But health experts say India had an entire year to prepare for the inevitable - and it didn’t.

AP