London: These students from India are worrying about their own families thousands of miles away.
Ever conscious of the threat of COVID-19, the Indian YMCA student hostel in central London where they stay has strict measures in place to curb the threat of the virus - and it seems to be working.
Public Health England says that confirmed cases have decreased steadily since January and that the number of people testing positive for COVID-19 in the UK was down nearly 7.8% per cent on 3 May compared to the previous seven days.
But that's little consolation to overseas Indians like these who can only despair at the unfolding crisis in India which is currently on the UK's Red List - countries from which entry to the UK is severely restricted.
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India’s health ministry reported 3,449 deaths on Tuesday.
The country's official average of daily confirmed cases has soared from 65,000 on April 1 to about 370,000.
India’s official count of coronavirus cases surpassed 20 million Tuesday, nearly doubling in the past three months. The confirmed deaths passed 220,000 in a country of 1.4 billion people, but it is considered an undercount.
Trishla Bothra, a London Business School graduate, finds some solace in the efforts made by those back home, as she proudly shares a family picture.
She has donated blood plasma to help others suffering from the virus.
She describes her horror at how the spiralling number of COVID-19 cases in the country has touched home.
"So I started getting worried about what was happening in India about two to three weeks ago when I started getting news about my distant family. Some of them tested positive and were admitted to the ICU. They were not able to meet their family and we were not able to help, given that we were not supposed to be in contact with them. And then my parents had recently got vaccinated, like the second dose, but then I started listening to the side effects of the vaccine and about the extremities of the third and fourth mutation and my brother had also tested positive so I was quite scared and I was keeping a check on them quite continuously."
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The Indian YMCA was established in 1920 as a hostel and cultural centre for students from India who come to London to further their studies.
For many, it's a home away from home allowing them to stay close to their roots while overseas.
But the centre has become much more than that in recent weeks as news of the COVID-19 crisis in India has reached them.
Jessika Dawar, from New Delhi, is studying at the London School of Economics. She says: "It's genuinely very comforting to have people from your community."
Nikhil Gawade, a London Business School graduate, has been in contact with his family regularly since the crisis took hold two weeks ago.
"It was heartbreaking for me, especially when my dad was admitted to the hospital, but I was away from them and I couldn't support them. At that point, I was feeling quite lonely and I didn't know how to react," he says.
"But then after a few days when he recovered, I got that feeling of 'I should help my country' and so me and a few friends of mine we started a plasma donor database."
For Dr Neela Nachiappan, who is studying postgraduate qualifications at University College London, her training gives her deeper, more worrying insight into health concerns facing COVID patients in India.
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From thousands of miles away, she speaks on the phone to her friend and colleague Dr Neevathea, the Head of the Isolation ward at SIMS Hospital, Valapadami in Chennai, who describes the utter urgency of the situation she's seeing before her:
"The situation in India is now really worse, wherein we don't even have the lockdown being imposed and from the medical field we are asking the government to give a very strict lockdown. We know the people will be affected economically-wise, but still on the other hand to save people's lives, economics maybe can be developed later but on the life-saving part we beg the government to give a complete lockdown at least for two weeks to give a break, to break the chain of the pandemic."
While the situation in India may be desperate, charities in the UK have been quick to respond.
Hitan Mehta is the Executive Director of the British Asian Trust, a Diaspora-led international development organisation that helps disadvantaged communities in South Asia.
The British Asian Trust has recently launched an emergency appeal to deliver oxygen concentrators to hospitals in India where they are most needed.
"We've been working with a partner organisation in India to provide those on the ground, rather than providing them in urban centres, really looking at places where perhaps it's harder to reach so that people don't then come from those rural areas into cities where the hospital system is already stretched," he says.
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He says the equipment is a good alternative when hospital-grade equipment is not available.
"Oxygen concentrators can be used in smaller environments, sometimes even in homes as well depending on the size of them. It uses the air that we breathe around us and then re-purposes that to allow a combined strength of oxygen to be given to an individual to help them breathe more regularly."
The appeal has raised £1.7 million so far and is hoping to raise £2 million in total.
AP
