The number of people infected with the coronavirus in India has reached a record high in the last 24 hours, reaching more than 217,000.
India logged in a record 2,17,353 daily coronavirus cases as many states grappled with shortages of hospital beds, oxygen, medicines, and vaccine doses. The fresh cases in the deadly second wave took the total caseload to over 1.42 crore.
The surge was the seventh record daily increase in the last eight days.
India is battling a massive second wave of infections, centered on the economically significant state of Maharashtra, home to Mumbai.
The western state accounts for about a quarter of the country’s total cases.
Figures released by the health ministry on Thursday showed 200,739 COVID-19 cases had been reported over the last 24 hours. Daily deaths stood at 1,038, taking the total to 173,123.
The total caseload reached 14.1 million, only second to the United States, which leads the global tally with 31.4 million cases.
Hospitals and doctors in Maharashtra as well other regions including Gujarat and Delhi in the north reported chaotic scenes as healthcare facilities were overwhelmed.
“The situation is horrible. We are a 900-bed hospital, but there are about 60 patients waiting and we don’t have space for them,” said Avinash Gawande, an official at the Government Medical College and Hospital in Nagpur, a commercial hub in Maharashtra.
“If such conditions persist, the death toll will rise,” the head of a medical body in Ahmedabad wrote in a letter to the Gujarat state chief minister.
India’s government said the country had been producing oxygen at full capacity every day for the last two days and had boosted output.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Hindu pilgrims thronged to the Kumbh Mela religious festival in the north of the country, stoking fears of a new surge in COVID-19 cases in the region.
COVID-19 cases also hit new records in the capital Delhi, with doctors warning the surge there could be deadlier than in 2020.
“This virus is more infectious and virulent … we have 35-year-olds with pneumonia in intensive care, which was not happening last year,” said Dhiren Gupta, a pediatrician at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in New Delhi.
“The situation is chaotic.”
