But these days, traffic is sparse, with only occasional trucks or motorbikes passing by. The once noisy atmosphere no longer appeared. Unpleasant silence crept across India as the COVID-19 crisis erupted, partly due to local closures of factories, and partly because many people here fear infection. Contrary to that quiet, fighting activities are increasingly explosive: ambulances race to the next patient, ordinary people frantically criss-crossing the city in search of medicine, oxygen, and beds sick. After a year of relative calm, the country of nearly 1.4 billion people is grappling with a powerful last-minute storm. With the number of new cases still exceeding 300,000 per day, India regularly accounts for around 50% of all new cases worldwide. Vijayawada International Airport was bustling with only a handful of passengers, and flights were also few. (Photo: ST) Problems from tests At the end of April, in the corner of the Artemis hospital compound in Gurgaon, a man repeatedly fell and had to be helped by those around him as he stood in line waiting for an RT-PCR test. The man was seated in a chair but collapsed. He was brought to the front of the queue but was too weak to last long. As hospital staff led the man toward the main building, he resisted, pointing to an elderly man sitting in the corner. Turns out this person came here not to do an RT-PCR test for himself but for his father. Meanwhile, at the front, the doctor in charge, overwhelmed by the number of samples to be taken, shouted at a patient for breaking in. Most people in line will wait at least two hours to be checked in. And it takes at least 48 hours to get results. Crowds of testing people create congestion at facilities. (Photo: ST) Unlike the first wave that affected the elderly, the second wave made many young people sick. Middle-aged parents have to bring children with coughs and fevers to testing centers. Prolonged delays have unfortunate consequences. Without quick and reliable test results, people won’t be able to get the care they need and could end up passing the virus on to many others. Mr. Claudien Jacob understood the situation all too well. He lost his 71-year-old mother on April 29 at home in Bangalore, when she was bedridden. She was hot with fever and her oxygen saturation level gradually decreased. By the time they were able to have a lab technician come to their home to collect an RT-PCR sample, other household members had also developed typical symptoms of COVID-19. But without the test, she wouldn’t have a hospital bed. On April 29, at 7 a.m., she took her last breath. At 7:30 a.m., Mr. Jacob’s phone beeped with her test result: positive. He has yet to receive his test results. “I’m dead tired, but no one else is doing this, so I went to the cemetery. I still haven’t had time to feel that my mother is dead.” A grieving family sends off a loved one who died of COVID-19 while keeping their distance. (Photo: ST) In March 2020, during the first pandemic outbreak, India instituted a strict 21-day lockdown. While bad for the economy, this also helps expand infrastructure from hospital beds to testing facilities. The number of tests has been increased from less than 100 to more than 1.4 million per day. The number of labs doing testing has also increased from 14 at the beginning of last year to more than 2,400 this year. But that’s still not enough. Survival battle Now, it’s common for Indians to see people rushing to find the basic necessities that were always assumed hospitals would have. Never before have citizens had to hunt for oxygen as often as they do now. Looking out the window, it’s not difficult to see someone rushing with an oxygen tank on the car to bring to the patient. Hospitalization – is a matter of will, wealth, relationships and of course luck. Indians now joke that before the pandemic, people panicked when a loved one was taken to the hospital’s intensive care unit, but now they’re happy. The journey to getting a bed is like a competitive sport. Common scene on Indian streets. (Photo: ST) Survival is not easy either. People safe from COVID-19 and their families talk about loneliness and stress. Families are not allowed to see patients in COVID-19 wards or intensive care units. In absolute isolation, all one could hear was the single, heavy breathing. But anyway, they are still considered “lucky” people. Coping with trauma Outside the Old Seemapuri crematorium in Delhi, Jitender Singh Shunty, founder of Shaheed Bhagat Singh Sewa Dal – a non-profit organization – drinks his first tea at 2pm. He said he felt like fainting and had to rest despite having very little time. Mr. Shunty helped cremate unclaimed bodies and dispose of the ashes in the Hindu tradition, receiving many calls. “Yes, we will come and prepare for the funeral. Don’t worry”, he told a desperate person on the phone. He received more than 400 calls a day, and lived in the car for days. He has a fleet of 18 ambulances and has lost one driver, Arif Khan, to the pandemic. These two were rejected by 4 hospitals in one day. (Photo: ST) Ordinary men and women have become superheroes during the pandemic. A driver in Bhopal sells his wife’s jewelry to convert the car into a makeshift ambulance. Another person in Mumbai sells his SUV for 2.2 million rupees to buy oxygen tanks for everyone. In Kerala, an elderly man donated almost all of his savings of Rs 200,000 to COVID-19 relief efforts. A nursing mother in Bangalore donates breast milk to a premature baby whose mother has died from the epidemic. And it is these moments that are a temporary respite from the horror that is unfolding. A nurse cares for a child who has recently recovered from COVID-19. (Photo: ST)

Dressed in blue protective gear and wearing a visor under a bright yellow turban, Jitender Singh Shunty sprayed disinfectant on bodies at the Seemapuri crematorium in northeastern Delhi. He had to act fast because bodies were delivered faster than cremation. The families and friends of those who have died, and those who are trying to find hospital beds and oxygen tanks to save their loved ones, are losing patience. “We are doing all we can to help families have a decent funeral for their loved ones,” he said as he rushed into another ambulance that had just arrived with two bodies. Since the beginning of April, when India suffered a second wave of the outbreak, Jitender Singh Shunty and his 20 volunteers were shocked by the large number of bodies brought in. “Last year we cremated 967 bodies, this month alone we cremated 670 bodies,” he said. Worldometers chart of the high number of infections in India as of May 10. About 20km from Seemapuri, New Delhi, dozens of people were gathering outside Waseem’s gas station. They all have the same question: When will the new oxygen tanks arrive? Waseem is committed to updating information on WhatsApp as soon as it is available. “People are dying from lack of oxygen so I thought I had to do something to help them,” Waseem said. “Someone told me that I would get sick if I kept going out and meeting so many people with Covid-19 relatives. I’m really scared, but if I don’t help them, I’ll be haunted for life.” Waseem added. Not alone As India is trying to find a way to deal with the pandemic, young men and women from all over the country do not hesitate to volunteer to contribute to the fight. They set up apps to solicit support and help, distribute key supplies, and use social media to direct resources to those in need. With two-thirds of its 1.3 billion population under the age of 35, India is a country dominated by young people, but young people have never been called upon to shoulder such enormous responsibilities. Photo: Times of India Swadha Prasad is working with dozens of volunteers – all between the ages of 14 and 19 – as part of the youth-led UNCUT organization, building an online database to gather information. about available medical resources across the country. This is 24/7, with teens constantly working over the phone to verify supplies, update information in real time, and take calls from patient relatives. “Some of us work from midnight to morning, because the calls don’t stop at 3 a.m.,” CNA quoted Prasad, a 17-year-old schoolgirl who worked 14 hours a day from noon the day before to 1 a.m. next morning. It was a long and tiring shift, but this Mumbai resident was still very enthusiastic. “If I could help save a life, I would never say No.” And many Covid-19 victims have been saved. Prasad cites an example where her team was able to deliver oxygen in the middle of the night, saving the life of a young patient desperately waiting for help. “It’s not just about providing resources… sometimes people want to know they’re not alone,” she said. The graph of Worldometers shows the correlation between the number of new infections (yellow) and the number of new recoveries (blue) in India as of April 30. Technology limitations However, in many small Indian towns and villages, technological limitations exacerbate the situation. Urgent requests for resources and spare hospital beds have spurred a large number of Twitter users. 25-year-old software engineer Umang Galaiya solved this problem by writing an app that makes it easy for users to find what they need, and directs their search to verified resources. But even so, his application cannot help many people living outside of big cities because the number of internet users is very small. “If I look for resources in Jamnagar, I get nothing on Twitter,” reflected the young man. And according to this male engineer, the pandemic cannot be controlled without the government. Simple measures still save many lives. For example, authorities could create an online bed registry, which updates automatically in real time, to save distressed patients from running back and forth knocking on the door of each treatment facility. According to the update of statistics page Worldometers, as of noon on May 12, India has recorded more than 23.3 million people infected with Covid-19 and about 254,200 deaths.

In many cities around the world, traffic congestion has become an obsession but it is so familiar that no one seems to care about effectively solving this problem. In Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, most of the day is spent on commuting.Peter Elias, a lecturer specializing in planning at the University of Lagos, says traffic jams usually start around 6 a.m. and last for at least 9 o’clock. From 13:00 to 15:00, parents pick up their children to go to school to block the road. Then, Lagos slips during the evening rush hour, which can last until 20-21h. Traffic jam in Lagos Along with the rapid development of Lagos, the traffic congestion in this city is getting worse. The travel speed was so slow that the authorities even installed a television around a roundabout so that drivers could watch entertainment. Satellite maker Tomtom and data company INRIX used to rank cities by traffic congestion. Outstanding on the list are often cities in rich, above-middle-income countries. Examples of traffic jams include Cairo (Egypt), Delhi (India), Dhaka (Bangladesh), Jakarta (Indonesia), Lagos (Nigeria), Manila (Philippines), Nairobi (Kenya) and Sao Paulo (Brazil). ). Most of these cities have 3 things in common. The first is too crowded. Second, with the exception of Delhi, nowhere has a fast and widespread rail-based public transport system so people have very few travel options. Third, these cities are in a trend to rapidly increase the number of private vehicles. In Delhi, the number of motorbikes increased from 4.3 million units in 2011 to 6.7 million units in 2017. Cars increased from 2.2 million units of lane to 3.2 million units. at the end of the month, because at that time, the workers receive salary before they can buy gas. Chart of increase in private vehicles and declining public transport in major Indian cities over the years. Source: Times of India According to Nation Thailand, private vehicles in Bangkok as of 2018 were 9.7 million vehicles, 8 times more than the capacity of the infrastructure system. Besides, the area for static traffic is also alarmingly low, only 8-10% compared with 20-30% in Western countries. While everyone is upset with traffic jams, it’s a reality that’s unavoidable in many major cities. Economists believe this situation is a huge drain on the country’s resources. The Bangkok Post in 2019 stated that traffic jam caused people in the Thai capital to lose 97 million baht / day (74 billion VND) and 3.5 billion baht / year (27,000 billion VND) for fuel. . The city’s economy also suffered a lot of damage from traffic congestion. About 11 billion baht / year is wasted due to the time people are congested on the road every day. The two major cities of Vietnam, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, also lose billions of dollars each year due to traffic. According to calculations, each year Ho Chi Minh City lost about 1.2 million working hours, 1.3 billion USD / year due to traffic congestion and 2.3 billion USD due to environmental pollution from motor vehicles. . Evaluation from the Institute of Transportation Strategy and Development (Ministry of Transport) also said that congestion causes damage to the city. Hanoi is about $ 1-1.2 billion a year. Travel time on the same distance in Hanoi takes up to 45 minutes, while Ho Chi Minh City takes 30 minutes. Meanwhile, INRIX estimates, traffic congestion causing damage to two US cities, Los Angeles and New York, is 19 billion and 34 billion USD in 2017, including fuel costs and loss of labor productivity. Every hour in traffic is also an unused hour for being productive. And, according to Matthias Sweet of Ryerson University in Canada, traffic congestion slows job growth in US cities because it prolongs commuting time on average by more than 4.5 minutes. In a situation where the situation could hardly be improved quickly, some people have figured out how to adapt themselves. For example, Nara, a housekeeper in Sao Paulo, usually takes three hours to get to work. She started off by walking 20 minutes to a bus stop. After an hour long journey, she walked to another bus stop and took the second train, which took about an hour more. Then she walked again. Nara can travel faster if she takes the subway, but she is afraid to squeeze among the teasing men on the train. She decided to choose the long-distance bus to create “a small world” for herself, immerse herself in music and reflect on life. She enjoys the journey. TomTom Traffic Index 2020 chart of the world’s worst traffic congestion cities. Percentage indicates the amount of time traveling on the road more than when not in traffic. In cities where traffic is often congested, very few drivers obey a ban on texting or making phone calls. Whenever the car does not budge, they turn to gossip with their friends, even focus on personal things like shopping online. Meanwhile, street vendors appeared everywhere, supplying from soft drinks, grapes, chips, eggs, hot water … to the drivers. A 43-year-old man named Lawal sells inflatable mattresses. He used to have a stall in a roadside market selling old clothes and phones. But the police cleared the market to reduce traffic congestion, so Lawal went peddling. Lawal likes slow-moving traffic, not a complete stop. Because of that, he can easily slip through the lanes to sell goods. But for drivers, many people are fed up with sitting in the middle of the traffic jam. Doctors at the American University of Beirut (Lebanon) conducted a study, measuring the blood pressure of drivers who pulled into a gas station when traffic was heavy, and compared them to those who pulled over. sparse traffic in the middle of the road. The results showed that people suffering from congestion had an average systolic blood pressure of 142 and diastolic blood pressure of 87. And those who drove on the empty road were in better health, with two figures of 123, respectively. and 78. Even a late driver has no effect on their blood pressure. Traffic jams in Delhi Despite all these annoyances, time spent in traffic jams seems soon to be forgotten. Scientists Eric Morris and Jana Hirsch have researched using US time to find evidence that people in big cities do not forget feelings of discomfort when rush hour. However, they found almost nothing. The traffic jam made those who were stuck angry. But when the flow of cars started to move, people seemed to forget this feeling. That could help explain why Americans (and other expats) often oppose measures like congestion charges, according to the two experts. In 1966, the Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar gave an impressive conclusion in his work.In the short story The Southern Thruway, a man was driving to Paris when he was caught in a traffic jam that lasted for many days. . At first, he and the other drivers were very angry, but gradually they created a miniature society, shared food and drinks, and turned a car into a hospital. But when the cars start to move, the protagonist goes crazy. Turns out there was no place where he enjoyed the traffic jam in the middle of the road.

The body of the patient Covid-19 is piled up in a crematory in New Delhi, where every four minutes, someone dies from a pandemic. Someone brought the body and left it. At the Ghazipur village crematory in eastern New Delhi, bodies were brought, one after the other. The amount of bodies was so great that ambulances and trucks transporting the dead blocked an entire road, Guardian described on April 30. Before the pandemic happened, in Ghazipur crematory staff’s memory, there was only one time that it was filled with space in a day. But now, sometime early in the morning, this place has received 150 bodies, while the maximum capacity is 38 bodies. Crematorial staff have to expand the scope of operations to parking lots but also cannot meet all demand. In the Indian capital, the second wave of Covid-19 infections is still raging with no sign of slowing down. On April 30, Delhi recorded a record number of 395 deaths and 24,235 new infections. Across India, the total number of new infections during the day was unprecedentedly high with 386,693 cases. Someone brought the body and left it Cremators in India are rushing to increase their capacity to handle 1,000 cremations a day. It is at these cremations that the destruction of Covid-19 in Delhi is being most evident. In 30 years of helping cremate the dead, Sunil Kumar Sharma, head of the Ghazipur village crematorium, said she had never thought of such a scene. “Too many people died. I have a feeling if this situation continues, there will be no one in Delhi, ”Sharma said. Normally, the body of a Covid-19 patient must be handled according to a rigorous procedure. But according to Sharma, corpses from hospitals are often not covered with protective cloths, putting cremators at risk of exposure. Some families even try to hide the death of a loved one from Covid-19. “The situation here is terrible and terrible,” said Mr. Sharma. “We have to work 20 hours a day, very tiring. My spirit seemed to have broken at the surroundings. Now there are people who bring the body and leave it, so we have to perform the ceremony to save some face for the deceased. According to the Hindu and Sikh beliefs of the Indians, a person cannot enter the door of heaven if their body is cremated without the watcher’s presence and keeping the fire on the pyre. Every day, Sharma’s crematorium consumes 60 tons of wood. “Every night, I worry about how to dispose of the body delivered tomorrow,” Mr. Sharma said. “What if it is beyond our capabilities?”. Suffering covers everywhere With thousands of recently cremated bodies, the air around Ghazipur crematorium was thick black smoke. Scattered around the ash-gray crematoriums left the day before were some offerings: mangoes, pomegranates, and orange flowers. On a nearby ambulance, a woman in a dark green sari was mumbling her prayers. In the car with her was the body of her husband, who had just died that morning because of Covid-19. The widow tried to place a red handshake on her husband’s body but was gently pushed away by a man in a protective suit to transport the body. The air around Ghazipur crematorium was thick black smoke from thousands of recent cremations. Photo: Shutterstock. Another man, Ajay Gupta, cried bitterly while the body of his brother, Ram, was placed on the crematorium. Just last week, Ram received treatment from the hospital for breathing problems. Ram’s illness had been in remission at first. I can even video call you from the hospital bed. But when the hospital ran out of oxygen, Ram did not survive. “Just a few days ago the nurse told us he would be fine,” Gupta said. Gupta is also a victim of the emerging black market in Delhi. It sells oxygen and drugs like Remdesivir to desperate families like Gupta at exorbitant prices. According to Gupta, after listening to the doctor, he used the last coin to buy Remdesivir for his brother at the black market for 630,000 rupees (about 8,500 USD), 10 times higher than normal. However, the effectiveness of Remdesivir Covid-19 is still questionable. “I felt like everything had collapsed,” Gupta said. Relatives wearing medical protective clothing deliver the body of a patient recently lost from Covid-19 in the crematory village of Ghazipur, east of Delhi. Photo: Shutterstock. Krishnan Pal, 48, who sells snacks in Delhi, is also one of those who died after repeatedly being rejected by the hospital due to overload. Pal cousin Kai Charan Kashap said they knocked on the doors of every hospital in Delhi but were unable to find an empty bed. After that, Pal was transported by his family to Agra, a city in the adjacent state of Uttar Pradesh. The hospital here still has empty beds but there is no oxygen left. In the end, Pal died on his way to Bareilly, a city in the state of Uttar Pradesh. “People are dying in the middle of the street because they can’t breathe,” said Kashap in a choked sob while waiting for his brother’s body to be transported from the morgue. Vaccine is seen as the way out of the crisis Many believe that the vaccine is the only long-term way to help India get out of the corona virus crisis. But on April 30, authorities in some parts of Delhi said plans to vaccinate people aged 18 and over had been delayed indefinitely due to lack of supply. The announcement comes just a day before the expanded immunization program is scheduled to be rolled out in Indian courts. Shortages such as in the capital Delhi are also common across this South Asian country. An immunization center in Mumbai posted “no vaccinations for the next three days” on April 30. Photo: Reuters. Delhi Prime Minister Arvind Kejriwal said authorities would inject the vaccine “as soon as possible”. But some private clinics in Delhi said the vaccine is not expected to arrive for at least another month or even two. During that time, the crematory and cemetery in Delhi will continue to suffer the deadly pressure that engulfs the city every day. At the Ghazipur crematory, after sunset, all crematoriums will be lit up at the same time. Flames flared in the screams of heat and pain. Tomb diggers work non-stop in India Tomb diggers work 24 hours a day to bury those who have died from Covid-19. Their shift did not stop amid the second wave of Covid-19 in India.

Rajni Gill woke up with a mild fever in mid-April, the first sign that she had Covid-19. Within a few days, she had difficulty breathing and was nearly unconscious at the hospital. Desperate to be unable to arrange for Gill’s plasma treatment, her sister posted a plea on social media: “I am looking for a plasma donor for the sister who is hospitalized in Noida. She is blood type B and 43 years old “. Fortunately, the message quickly spread on Twitter and appeared on the phone of Mr. Srinivas BV, an opposition politician in nearby Delhi. He claimed to be a voluntary blood donor and went to help this Covid-19 patient. Internet cries for help spread “like wildfire” India’s health care system has been on the brink of collapse as the country records a record increase every day. Desperate, relatives and friends of the infected people have to send messages for help on social networks. Thousands of people are dying from Covid-19 in India every day. Photo: New York Times. Some people need medical oxygen, which is almost impossible to find in the capital, Delhi. Others are on the hunt for high-priced drugs on the black market, or extremely scarce ventilators. And many of those pleas received a response. The prayers for help reached all walks of life in India, from engineers, lawyers, NGO workers, workers, politicians, doctors and even tuk drivers- tuk. Online networks to help victims of Covid-19 are formed in many of the most remote places. Mr. Srinivas, 38 years old, who donated blood to patient Covid-19 in this story is also among these. As chairman of the youth union of the opposition Indian Congress Party, in early 2020, when the first pandemic struck and India had to blockade, Mr. Srinivas summoned the young volunteers. All over the country distributes food to trapped migrants along with more than 10 million masks. Srinivas said calls for help on social media began to spread “like wildfire”. So he created the hashtag #SOSIYC so that everyone could connect with his Indian Youth Congress. How online networks work India’s online help networks rely on tools and algorithms commonly used in social media marketing. Families of victims will tag with large followers to amplify their message. Meanwhile, volunteer organizers use keywords to filter requests. Abhishek Murarka, who works in finance in Mumbai, decided he needed to do more than share his Twitter posts. He began searching for “verified”, “confirmed” and “available” on Twitter to follow potential supporters like Mr. Srinivas’s team. He posted an 84-second video explaining his tricks so others can use. Hundreds of miles away, 20-year-old Praveen Mishra studied Murarka’s way and applied his own filters to search for hospital beds, oxygen and medicine. He was able to give a special medicine to a patient in Delhi after confirming that it was available in Hyderabad. Some people are even exploiting resources around the world. Nikhil Jois and his team checked and contacted charities providing oxygen, food and tampons. He shortened the list to just over a dozen organizations, then asked companies in India to stick the list on their apps or websites so that Indians could easily access it. help. “The best part of social media is that you trust strangers,” said Jois. Nikhil Jois checked aid organizations and called for donations to victims of Covid-19. Photo: Nikhil Jois. Social media is the only way to seek help However, putting your trust in social media isn’t always a good idea. Several well-known accounts offer shoddy or exorbitant prices to desperate patients. Even joking and deceiving vulnerable people can cause many conflicts of hatred. But with India in crisis and moving not a safe option, social media is the only way for some people to seek help. Aditya Jain, who lives in the capital Delhi, recently issued a call on Twitter. He felt helpless because his aunt and uncle, who lived about 200 km away in Agra, were struggling over a blockade. His aunt has spinal disease, and his uncle, a diabetic, is on dialysis every week. Unable to go out, they only ate one meal a day. They are unable to take care of themselves and cannot even bathe themselves. Through LinkedIn, he found an organization that caters to seniors and filled out a form, providing their names and locations. The next morning, the volunteers showed up in front of his aunt’s house with breakfast and adult diapers. “Social media is like a gift from heaven to us,” said Jain emotionally. But not everyone is as lucky as Jain and Miss Gill. Mr. Srinivas said his organization receives at least 10,000 messages on Twitter every day. However, for every 100 requests, he can usually only help from 30 to 40 people due to lack of manpower and material resources. A volunteer teaches a family member how to use an oxygen tank. Photo: Srinivas BV Ms. Mahua Ray Chaudhuri used to “frantically” tag Mr. Srinivas while searching for oxygen for her ailing father. His team found some, but that was not enough: There were no more ICU beds for patients in the hospital. “At least I could find oxygen for my dad, and he didn’t die of suffocation,” Ms. Chaudhuri said. “This help from these strangers on Twitter is like a relief to our pandemic mind and soul.” The chaplain’s account of the funeral for 150 Covid-19 patients before cremation Every day, Hindu cleric RamKaran Mishra performs a funeral for about 150 people who have died from Covid-19 at the Ghazipur crematory facility east of New Delhi, India.

COVID-19 patients must share a bed at Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Hospital, New Delhi, India. Photo: Reuters Are there oxygen scarcity in hospitals? The current emergency scarcity is not because India has run out of oxygen. The main problem is that the oxygen does not get to the hospital in time. The delay was due to the very remote location of the oxygen production facilities, the large redistribution network and partly due to the government’s “bad scheme”. Over the course of the past week, several hospitals in the capital New Delhi, which are incapable of meeting a large demand for oxygen, have called for an urgent supply of oxygen. However, at the same time, the epidemic situation in the neighboring New Delhi states such as Uttar Pradesh and Haryana was also very bad, the number of hospitalized patients was overloaded, making factories have to give priority to meeting demand. local bridge. Therefore, hospitals in the capital have to order factories further from the industrial zones in the east of India. Why is the oxygen delivery delayed? Industrial oxygen production plants that serve the Indian capital are located in seven different states. Some factories are more than 1,000 kilometers from New Delhi. A vehicle transports oxygen outside an oxygen plant in Ghaziabad, a suburb of New Delhi, India. Photo: Reuters Due to the flammable nature of this material, all shipments of liquefied oxygen must be transported in special storage tanks, with detailed transportation plans to ensure timely deliveries, the source bear the name said. Over the past few days, as the interstate medical oxygen scramble in India worsens, some local authorities have disrupted the oxygen delivery to meet their local needs. before. As a result, Delhi received only 177 tons of pure oxygen on April 21, instead of 378 tons as allocated. However, some local sources said that hospitals in New Delhi have ordered without including the time to transport oxygen across many states by land. “It won’t happen if states plan and order two to three weeks earlier,” the source said. The Delhi government also did not respond to the plan to buy oxygen. Does India have enough oxygen production capacity? Medical personnel check oxygen tanks at a temporary quarantine facility in New Delhi. Photo: Bloomberg India’s daily production capacity can amount to at least 7,100 tons of oxygen, including for industrial purposes. This is enough to meet current demand. This week, the Government of India has decided to allocate 6,822 tons of liquid oxygen per day to the 20 states most affected by the COVID-19 epidemic. This is larger than the total demand of the localities with 6,785 tons, Prime Minister Narendra Modi Office said. On April 12, the amount of oxygen required by the health sector was only about 3,842 tons, just over half of the allotted oxygen, when the cases had not yet risen sharply. According to the Office of the Prime Minister of India, the oxygen capacity of India has increased by 3,300 tons in just a few days thanks to the shift of production of steel mills and industrial units to the medical sector. What will India do to deal with the oxygen crisis? Relatives funnel a victim who died of COVID-19 in a cemetery in New Delhi. Photo: Reuters. The government has mobilized Indian cargo ships to transport oxygen tanks from the factory to locations in most urgent need. In partnership with industrial gas corporation Linde India (LIND.NS) and many other companies, India is also using Air Force cargo jets to deliver empty tanks to production plants. Then, these tanks are refilled again and returned by road. In addition, the Indian armed forces are importing 23 mobile oxygen production machines from Germany to prepare for a worse situation. Many other industries are also reported to be supporting pure oxygen in hospitals. India’s multidisciplinary Tata group has imported 24 specialized containers for the transportation of liquid oxygen. An employee dismantles the oxygen tank from the car down to feed it into an oxygen pump plant. Photo: Reuters The government also issued an order to convert argon and nitrogen storage tanks for medical oxygen transportation. However, experts predict that India will face an increasing trend of daily cases in the next few weeks. Therefore, the country will have to increase production and distribution of these special types of medical supplies in the coming days.

According to Twitter’s disclosure on the Lumen database – a Harvard University project (USA), the Indian government has issued an urgent order to censor posts on the platform. The COVID-19 epidemic in India is complicated. Photo: REUTERS Twitter rejected several posts following a legal request from the Indian government, a Twitter spokesperson told Reuters on April 24. In the legal request that the Indian government made on April 23 and was disclosed on Lumen, the Indian government side mentioned 21 posts. Among them were posts from a legislator named Revnath Reddy, a minister in West Bengal state named Moloy Ghatak and a filmmaker named Avinash Das. The Indian government has cited the Information Technology Act of 2000 in its request for censorship on Twitter. “When we receive a valid legal request, we will review it according to both Twitter’s rules and local law,” said a spokesperson for Twitter. “If the content violates Twitter’s rules, it will be removed from the service. If determined to be illegal in a certain jurisdiction, but not in violation of Twitter’s rules, We can only keep access to content in India “- the spokesperson said. The spokesperson confirmed that Twitter had directly notified the account holders of the retention of their content, and announced that the company had received a legitimate request regarding their posts. Such requests for content censorship were previously reported by tech news site TechCrunch, which states that Twitter is not the only platform affected by the order. India is experiencing an unprecedented wave of COVID-19 infections when in the Delhi metropolitan area alone, an average of one person dies of COVID-19 every less than four minutes. On April 24, the number of COVID-19 deaths across India increased by 2,624, to more than 189,500. Cremators across India buckled as the number of COVID-19 deaths soared. The flames from the cremation point, along with the stifling heat inherent, have made the atmosphere in India more uncomfortable and sad. The number of deaths increased rapidly leading to a shortage of firewood and wood used in cremation. Many families have to wait for hours for the turn to cremate a loved one. The rare number of electric burial furnaces is also overloaded.

As India suffers from the world’s worst corona virus crisis, our New Delhi chiefs describe the fear of living in the midst of a pandemic spreading at large scale and speed. so. The crematoriums piled up the bodies, as if a war had just happened. Fire burns day and night. Many places held mass cremations, with dozens of people at the same time. And, at night, in some areas of New Delhi, the sky was blazing with flames. The sick person, without a bed, must lie down on the ground. Photo: New York Times. I waited for my turn to become infected Sickness and death were everywhere. Dozens of homes in my neighborhood have people infected. One of my colleagues is sick. My son’s teacher is also sick. The neighbor is two houses on the right side: Um. The two houses on the left: Um. “I don’t know what kind of illness I have,” said a good friend of mine who was in the hospital. “Just taking a breath and you will …”, his voice fades, unable to finish the sentence because he is too tired. He barely has a decent bed. And the medicine that the doctor prescribed for him is not in India. I was sitting in my house waiting for my turn to get sick. That is the feeling it is in New Delhi, as the world’s worst Covid-19 crisis is happening all around us. It’s out there, I’m here, and I feel as if it’s only a matter of time before I get sick. India is recording more infections every day, sometimes up to 350,000, more than any other country since the beginning of the pandemic, and that’s just the official numbers. Most experts believe that this number is lower than reality. The crematorium was overloaded, many bodies were waiting for their turn. Photo: New York Times. New Delhi, the vast capital of India’s 20 million people, is suffering from a huge spurt. A few days ago, the positive rate reached a staggering 36%. This means that more than a third of people tested are infected. A month ago, this figure was less than 3%. The disease spread so quickly that hospitals were completely flooded with sick people. Thousands of people were turned away. Medicine is exhausted. The same goes for lifesaving oxygen. Patients are trapped in long, tangled lines at the hospital gate or at home. They were gasping for breath, literally. Although New Delhi was blocked, the epidemic was still raging. Doctors across this city and some of Delhi’s top politicians are giving desperate SOS calls, both on social media and on TV, to beg for oxygen, medicine, and help. . It was as if war had just happened in India Experts have always warned that Covid-19 could devastate India completely. The country is vast with about 1.4 billion people, densely populated, and in many places, its inhabitants are still very poor. What we are witnessing is very different from last year, in the first wave of India. Then there is the fear of the unknown. Now we know. We know the overall disease, its size, its speed. We know how frightening this second wave is, it hits everyone at once. The outdoor collective cremation ground is constantly red and fiery. Photo: New York Times. What we feared in the first wave of last year is now coming to the fore: the disruption, the fall, the realization that so many people will die. As a foreign reporter for nearly 20 years, I traveled around war zones, was kidnapped in Iraq and sent to jail in many places. But this pandemic is worrisome in another way. There is no way to know if I, my wife, and two children are among those with mild illness and then recover well, or if we will be exhausted. And if we get really sick, where do we go? The intensive care areas are full. The entrance to many hospitals has been closed. A new strain here has a “double mutation” that can cause a lot of harm. Science has yet to delve into it, but as far as we know, one mutation makes the virus more contagious, and the other makes it partially resistant to the vaccine. Doctors are quite scared. I talked to a few people and they said that I had the vaccine twice but still got very sick. A Covid-19 patient is waiting to be hospitalized in South Delhi, April 24. Photo: New York Times. So what can we do? Personally, I try to stay optimistic, believing it to be one of the best immune system boosters. However, in reality, I find myself lazily walking indoors, cooking for the children in a lethargic state, feeling like both my mind and body are dough like wet powder. I’m afraid of checking my phone because I miss a text message telling my other friend that my friend is seriously ill, or worse. I am sure millions of people feel the same way. I began to visualize the symptoms: Did I have a sore throat? What is that headache? Is my condition worse today than yesterday? A part of where I live, South Delhi, is now blocked. Like many other places, we had a strict blockade last year. But now, the doctors here are warning us that the virus is more contagious and we have a lot less chance of getting help than the last wave. Therefore, many of us are frightened when we step outside, as if there is poison in the air and everyone is afraid of breathing. No one wears a mask, not even the police Delhi is plunged into hardships and dangers, but the situation is still getting worse. Epidemiologists say the number will continue to grow, possibly up to 500,000 new infections per day nationwide, and up to one million Indians will die from Covid-19 until August. It should not be like this. India was anti-epidemic well up until a few weeks ago, at least on the surface. The country closed its doors, experienced the first wave, then reopened. The mortality rate here is very low (at least according to official statistics). Last winter, life almost returned to normal. I was out for the news in January and February, driving through towns in Central India. Nobody – I mean, no one, not even the police – wear a mask. This is as if the country is telling itself: “It’s okay, we have it under control”, despite the wave of a second wave. But now, not many people dare to think like that anymore. Relatives of a Covid-19 victim were performing a religious ceremony during the funeral on April 24. Photo: New York Times. Many in India are also upset with the speed of the vaccination campaign. Less than 10% of the population has received one dose, and only 1.6% are fully vaccinated, even though India is producing two vaccines. “Catastrophic catastrophe” Here, as elsewhere, the rich are less affected by a crisis. But this time it was different. A friend of mine, well connected, asked all the people he knew to help his friend, a severe Covid-19 patient. His friend is dead. No one can help him in hospital. The patient is paralyzed. “I tried everything to get him a bed, but we couldn’t. Everything is chaotic, ”my friend said, his emotions still intact. “This is a disaster. This is murder ”. Every day, I ventured out to buy food because no one delivered it. I wear two masks completely and stay as far away from others as possible. Almost every day passed, a family of 4 of us all withered from inside. We try to play together, try not to talk about the people who just got sick, or the people running around town looking for help, and they probably won’t find it. Sometimes we just sat quietly in the living room, looking out at the sweet figs and palms. Through the open window, on long, hot, quiet afternoons, we can only hear two languages: the sound of an ambulance. And birds. ‘The dead cannot leave peacefully in New Delhi either’ India is suffering from a serious shortage of medical equipment and oxygen in the context of a rapidly increasing number of Covid-19 cases. The patient’s family had to wait languidly for the cremation.