Covid pyres burn day and night as death toll overwhelms Delhi

The smoke from funeral pyres streaks the skies of Delhi as India goes from record to daily new record of coronavirus infections.

Multiple funeral pyres can be seen burning as people perform the last rites for their relatives who died of the COVID-19 coronavirus disease at a crematorium on Thursday in the outskirts of New Delhi. Picture: Anindito Mukherjee/Getty Images

Day and night the smoke from hundreds of funeral pyres streaks the skies of Delhi, India’s capital territory. At the city’s biggest crematorium it billows out over the Yamuna river as exhausted staff work around the clock to clear the bodies left by the wave of death that has engulfed India’s capital.

Delhi’s official crematoriums can no longer cope. While the fires burn nonstop by the river, makeshift pyres have appeared in car parks and waste ground, with India recording another record 332,730 coronavirus infections on Friday, the highest anywhere. Officially, more than 2260 Indians have died from the illness in the past 24 hours, but the true figure is thought to be many times higher.

On Saturday, the daily toll reached more than 340,000 new cases, taking India’s total to 16.5 million, second only to the United States, and another 2624 deaths in 24 hours, taking the official toll to nearly 190,000 since the pandemic started.

A Hindu cremation is supposed to be a family ritual, with loved ones preparing the body and pyre together. In Delhi and across India on Friday, solitary men sweat without ceremony behind masks and protective clothing in cruel heat, bidding farewell to others’ parents, wives, children, with what dignity they can salvage; fearful of exposure to the virus as they toil.

“Last week we were handling up to 30 bodies a day. This week it is averaging 65,” Jyot Jeet, who works for a non-profit medical group performing cremations at temporary sites in Delhi, said. “Yesterday it was 76 dead and we had to divert bodies to other places because we ran out of wood.”

In every neighbourhood there is mounting panic as friends and neighbours, young and old, rich and poor alike, succumb to the disease. Trapped indoors under lockdown again, the walls close in tighter each day as the number of cases surges and the virus continues its march across the city.

A medical worker inoculates a woman with the jab of COVID-19 coronavirus vaccine at a district hospital on Thursday in the outskirts of New Delhi. Picture: Anindito Mukherjee/Getty Images

Fear is magnified by the collapse of Delhi’s decrepit health system and the paralysis in government that failed to spot the second wave, or to act until Indians were once more dying in their thousands. Officials are still squabbling, desperate to shift the blame, while doctors beg for basic supplies and the system buckles.

At least 25 patients at one of central Delhi’s best hospitals died overnight when its oxygen supplies ran out. Public and private hospitals alike are reduced to issuing public appeals via social media, begging the authorities for new shipments of oxygen cylinders as their stocks dwindle by the hour.

One of Delhi’s biggest medical groups, Max Healthcare, which runs 10 hospitals, put out an SOS on Twitter on Friday, warning that two of its sites had less than an hour’s worth of oxygen left.

On social media the torrent of heartbreaking messages continues to build. “My father cannot breathe. His oxygen level is falling. No hospital beds, no oxygen. Please, please help!” said one among hundreds.

Too many appeals are followed hours later by grief-stricken reports of failure, of loved ones who died in the back seats of cars, on trolleys or on the pavements outside packed hospitals, gasping for breath and help that never came.

Many are turning to the black market. Messages pass on rumours of hospitals offering spare vaccines under the table. Coronavirus testing laboratories, overwhelmed by the outbreak, are closing down. Even local food deliveries have begun to halt as staff test positive for the virus. In Mumbai a fire in an intensive-care ward on Friday killed at least 13 patients. On Wednesday a main oxygen tank at another facility ruptured, cutting off the supply to COVID-19 sufferers inside and killing 22 patients.

Dead bodies, wrapped in protective cover, of patients who died of the COVID-19 coronavirus disease on the ground waiting to be cremated at a crematorium on Tuesday. Picture: Getty Images

Public desperation is turning to anger as the bickering in government goes on. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was caught up in a public spat with Arvind Kejriwal, chief minister for Delhi, after an online meeting between them was broadcast live on Friday. Mr Kejriwal questioned whether India had a national plan to tackle the crisis. “This is not appropriate,” Mr Modi snapped as he realised that the event was being televised.

Mr Modi’s complacency has been exposed by India’s collapse, after claiming that his government had “defeated” the virus last year. A report by the investigative magazine Caravan suggests that the government’s COVID-19 taskforce did not meet at all during February or March, even as case numbers surged. Last month more than 60,000 fans were allowed into a stadium in Ahmedabad to watch India play cricket against England, the biggest sports crowd in the world since the pandemic began.

Critics say the Prime Minister is more focused on capturing the opposition-held state of West Bengal than in tackling the crisis. He has held several rallies in recent weeks, drawing crowds of thousands of people with barely a mask in sight, while rejecting pleas to suspend the political campaign. His ruling BJP party is offering free coronavirus vaccines across Bengal if it wins the poll.

A woman is inoculated for COVID-19 in New Delhi. Picture: Getty Images

Everyone over the age of 18 will be eligible to receive the jab from May 1, but with barely 130 million vaccines administered so far in a population of 1.4 billion, and only 1.4 per cent of the population fully vaccinated, this is a race the virus is easily winning.

(Additional reporting by Saurabh Sharma)

The Times