India Covid crisis: ‘Never in my dreams did I imagine anything like this’

As the small car juddered to a halt at the hospital emergency ­entrance, frantic relatives hauled a young man out of the back seat. He looked no older than 25.

A man prays next to a burning pyre of a victim who died of the Covid-19 coronavirus at a cremation ground in New Delhi on April 26, 2021. (Photo by Jewel SAMAD / AFP)

As the small car juddered to a halt at the hospital emergency ­entrance, frantic relatives hauled a young man out of the back seat. He looked no older than 25.

They slung him on to a trolley where he lay convulsing, gaping at the sky, gasping for breath. “Save him. Please save him,” shrieked a woman who followed behind as he was rushed inside. Clutching each other, exhausted relatives slum­ped to the ground and wept.

A few metres away, almost ­oblivious to another family tragedy, Constantino was pacing the car park at Moolchand hospital in south Delhi. Glued to his phone, he called number after number in ­futile desperation. In the car ­behind him, an elderly man slumped from the open window, mouth open, his eyes closed. “I am looking for a bed or oxygen for my father but there is nothing,” Constantino, 52, said. “He had a fever, so we did a test for COVID, but since three days we have not heard the result. His condition has got worse.”

He was anxious to get back to his phone. “I didn’t think this was possible in India. So many people suffering,” he said. “There is total panic, and it is only the people who are helping. Where is the government?”

At nearby Safdarjung hospital, a steady stream of auto rickshaws screeched to a halt and gasping ­patients were dragged indoors.

Passing them the other way came bodies, sheathed in white plastic, followed by grieving relatives. Some were tearful, others numbed, watching expressionless as loved ones were bundled into vehicles and driven away to one of Delhi’s overflowing mortuaries, or the funeral pyres that now burn day and night across the Indian capital.

In the garden beside the hospital, men were camped on the worn patch of grass, some seeking a bed, others awaiting news of relatives receiving treatment inside. The few to have secured a bed are the lucky ones, but they now face hours of fear as they await news.

On Delhi’s COVID-19 wards, brutalised staff limp through each day, still reduced to begging the authorities for enough oxygen to keep their patients alive for a few more hours.

With no end in sight to Delhi’s vast, unfolding tragedy, as India’s second wave continues its relentless march across the capital, doctors have been reduced to a war footing by the scale and ferocity of the outbreak.

Resources are so stretched that the death of one patient offers the hope of life for another.

“As doctors, of course we feel grief when we lose a patient,” said Harjit Singh Bhatti, whose private hospital in southwestern Delhi has been converted into an emergency COVID-19 unit. “At the same time now, when a patient dies, we are able to give a ventilator or oxygen to someone who has a chance of being saved.”

Bhatti’s hospital in Dwarka is crammed, the patients sometimes two to a bed. Many more have been turned away, the hospital unable to cope. At times, the hospital’s remaining oxygen supply has dwindled to a few hours, helpless staff pleading with officials for fresh supplies as India struggles to mobilise a response to the crisis.

“It is very painful to turn a ­patient away, but we don’t have the resources to treat them,” ­Bhatti said. “The situation in the wards is terrible. We are working beyond capacity and the number of patients arriving is beyond ­imagination. Never in my dreams did I imagine anything like this.”

He is scathing of the political standoff that still drags on in Delhi, hampering the response to the ­crisis. The government of Prime Minister ­Narendra Modi is desperate to deflect the growing storm of public fury now aimed at him.

Modi, 70, who once seemed untouchable and only a few weeks ago triumphantly declared that India had “defeated” COVID-19 as case numbers plunged, is accused of fuelling the second wave, ­encouraging mass political and ­religious gatherings while distracted by state elections and pandering to his nationalist base. The scale of the crisis has shaken his air of dominance, as each day brings further catastrophe and his government flounders.

“Even now, Modi is still not acting as prime minister,” Bhatti said bitterly.

“He is still behaving like the star campaigner for his party. The virus is spreading at unimaginable speed. He must act now.”

The Times