Indian hospitals running out of oxygen as Covid cases hit daily record

Hospitals in India are running dangerously low on oxygen, causing panic among medical workers and raising fears that the country’s death toll from Covid-19 will rise sharply as a surge of infections overwhelms health services and funeral sites.

India on Friday reported a record 332,000 infections over the previous 24 hours — more than any other country has reported in a single day during the pandemic — as well as more than 2,200 deaths. Many more infections and fatalities remained uncounted, with crematoriums and burial grounds running out of space.

Panicked calls for emergency oxygen have resounded from hospitals across New Delhi, which has some of India’s best healthcare infrastructure, as well as elsewhere in the country.

In a televised appeal, Delhi’s chief minister Arvind Kejriwal pleaded with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi to secure more oxygen supplies for the city. “On behalf of the people of Delhi, with folded hands, I appeal to you that if immediate prompt action is not taken there will be a huge tragedy in Delhi,” he said.

Max Healthcare, one of the country’s leading private hospital chains, sent out an “SOS” message on Twitter, writing that there was less than an hour’s worth of oxygen left at two of its facilities in New Delhi after supplies promised overnight did not arrive.

Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, another private hospital in the Indian capital, said it had two hours of oxygen left, adding that 25 patients had died the previous day. It was unclear how many of those were linked to oxygen shortages, but the hospital warned: “Lives of another 60 sickest patients at risk, need urgent intervention.”

Intensive care beds, medicines and tests were also running low in Covid-19 hotspots, while patients were dying for want of treatment, queueing outside hospitals, waiting for ambulances or passing away at home.

The oxygen shortages have exposed a deeper failure of governance with tragic consequences, said analysts, just two months after Modi’s government trumpeted its efforts at containing the virus. Some scientists had believed India had achieved a measure of herd immunity, as cases had started to drop following a tough lockdown last year.

Health experts were concerned that the latest wave was being fuelled by the B.1.617 variant discovered in India, which may spread more quickly and be more vaccine evasive.

Modi has been accused of complacency and prioritising domestic political concerns ahead of the health crisis, holding mass election campaign rallies in West Bengal, where cases numbers have jumped. The government also permitted the Kumbh Mela, a Hindu festival and the world’s biggest religious gathering, to go ahead, with millions of pilgrims flocking to the Ganges.

At the same time, India has lagged in vaccinations, despite being the world’s largest manufacturer of jabs. The country has moved to fast-track approvals for foreign-made vaccines and announced that anyone over 18 will be eligible to be inoculated from next month.

Authorities, caught unprepared, have bickered over the shortages. Opposition-run Delhi has fought with Modi’s national government and traded accusations with neighbouring states Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. One Haryana politician accused Delhi of having “looted” its supplies.

“There has been almost a war over oxygen cylinders among states, and between states” and the central government, wrote the Hindustan Times newspaper in an editorial, adding that “citizens now are paying the price”. 

Healthcare groups including Max and Delhi’s Saroj Super Speciality Hospital have gone to court in order to secure supplies.

“I am at the hospital right now. I have only three hours of oxygen left,” Saurabh Bharadwaj, a lawmaker for Aam Aadmi party, which controls the Delhi local government, said in a video posted from his hospital bed. “Lots of people are dependent on oxygen. Without oxygen, people are going to die like flies. This is the time we should all come together and work together.”

The central government this week prohibited industrial oxygen production in order to boost emergency health stocks, while steel producers were reportedly redirecting supplies from plants for medical use.

Additional reporting by Andrea Rodrigues in Mumbai