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India is facing one of the worst COVID-19 outbreaks in the world, buckling the country’s weak healthcare system and overwhelming the nation’s ability to cremate and bury its dead.
The world’s second-most populous nation recorded 379,257 new cases Thursday, a daily record for any country since the coronavirus first emerged more than a year ago. It also reported 3,645 deaths, the most in a single day in India. The actual numbers of infections and deaths are believed to be significantly higher.
The outbreak is being blamed on a so-called double mutant variant of the coronavirus that’s believed to be highly infectious. A vaccine drive has sputtered due to limited doses.
‘Cannon fodder’: Medical students in India feel betrayed as cases rise faster than anywhere else
By NEHA MEHROTRA, ANIRUDDHA GHOSAL Associated Press
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An exhausted municipal worker rests after bringing the body of a person who died of COVID-19 for burial in Gauhati, India, on April 25, 2021. (Anupam Nath / Associated Press)
Since the beginning of the week, Dr. Siddharth Tara, a postgraduate medical student at New Delhi’s government-run Hindu Rao Hospital, has had a fever and persistent headache. He took a COVID-19 test, but the results have been delayed as the country’s health system implodes.
His hospital, overburdened and understaffed, wants him to keep working until the testing laboratory confirms he has COVID-19.