On Tuesday morning I woke up to a text. “Do you know of anyone doing home testing?” it said. “Need urgently for granny. Also oxygen cylinder? URGENT.” It was the third such plea that I’d received in as many days.
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The message came from a friend whose grandmother lives in New Town, a wealthy enclave to the east of Kolkata, where private hospitals serve gated communities. But when my friend’s grandmother developed a cough and a fever, and her oximeter showed worryingly low levels of blood oxygenation, there was no one to help her. Local doctors were overwhelmed. They were running out of test kits, out of oxygen, out of time.