Updated: Apr 24 2021, 15:35 ET
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INDIA has vowed to hang anyone who delays the delivery of oxygen supplies as the country buckles under a devastating second wave of coronavirus.
A high court in New Delhi today warned it would use the death penalty after brazen local officials intercepted and diverted oxygen tanks to desperate hospitals in their areas.
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Relatives transport a Covid patient on a stretcher to a hospital in New DelhiCredit: AFP
The court, which was hearing submissions by a group of hospitals over the oxygen shortages, described the devastating rise in infections as a tsunami .
Covid patients are dying on the pavement outside hospitals - and doctors fear infections will soon hit 500,000 per day.
Apr 24, 2021
A woman wait to receive the of the COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination centre In Mumbai, India, Saturday, April. 24, 2021. Indian authorities are scrambling to get medical oxygen to hospitals where COVID-19 patients are suffocating from low supplies. The effort Saturday comes as the country with the worldâs worst coronavirus surge set a new global daily record of infections for the third straight day. The 346,786 infections over the past day brought Indiaâs total past 16 million. (AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade)
SRINAGAR, India (AP) Indian authorities scrambled Saturday to get oxygen tanks to hospitals where COVID-19 patients were suffocating amid the world’s worst coronavirus surge, as the government came under increasing criticism for what doctors said was its negligence in the face of a foreseeable public health disaster.
This increases India’s total to more than 16 million cases, behind only the United States.
The health ministry reported another 2,624 deaths in the past 24 hours, pushing India’s confirmed death toll to 189,544.
(PA Graphics)
Hospitals in New Delhi and some of the worst-hit states have reported critical shortages of beds and oxygen supplies on Saturday.
Families have waited for days to cremate their loved ones at overburdened crematoriums, with many turning to makeshift facilities for last rites.
Health experts and critics say a downward trend in infections late last year lulled authorities into complacency, and they failed to plug the holes in the ailing health care system that had become evident during the first wave.
India has seen more than one million coronavirus cases since Wednesday
A new variant has seeped so deeply into the community its impossible to avoid
The country s outbreak is now being described as the most deadly in the world
The worst affected areas, including New Delhi, Mumbai and the state of Maharashtra, have run out of hospital beds and life-saving oxygen