MUMBAI / AHMEDABAD, India (Reuters) – India’s new coronavirus infections hit a record high on Wednesday, with the closure of Mumbai at midnight, but hundreds of thousands of pilgrims still attended a religious party in northern India. country.
The country reported 184,372 cases in the last 24 hours, according to data from the health ministry, which brought infections to 13.9 million. Deaths increased by 1,027, for a toll of 172,085.
After reporting less than 10,000 cases a day earlier this year, India has been the hardest hit country in the world since April 2nd. The government blames a widespread failure here for not taking into account the movements and social interaction among the population of 1.390 billion people.
The increase in cases comes as India’s richest state, Maharashtra, the epicenter of the second national wave, will enter a complete closure at midnight (1830 GMT) until the end of April to contain the spread of the virus. The state accounts for about a quarter of the country’s total coronavirus cases.
India’s commercial capital, Mumbai, was boiled over by buyers and stocked up before the closure took effect.
“We don’t know if we’ll be allowed to set up our stalls starting tomorrow, so we ask our customers to make as much supplies as possible today,” said Susheela, a street vegetable vendor who only goes through her name.
There were snake lines outside many grocery stores while residents waited to enter.
Elsewhere, overcrowded private hospitals distance patients, which is a growing burden on government facilities.
In East Gujurat, in the west, a Reuters witness on Wednesday saw a long queue of ambulances waiting in front of Ahmedabad Civil Hospital, where some patients were being treated there while they waited.
“My wife tested positive for COVID-19 on Sunday. We called an ambulance this morning to take her to the hospital because she had difficulty breathing, ”Becharbhai Waghela, who was accompanying his 61-year-old wife Shantaben, told Reuters.
“For the past two hours we have been waiting for the ambulance outside the hospital campus.”
A hospital source, who rejected his name as he is not allowed to speak publicly, said many private hospitals lacked oxygen and sent his patients to public hospitals.
FINES OF PILGRIMS
The state of Chhattisgarh, one of several inland regions struggling with an increase in cases, has set up a temporary 370-bed hospital in an indoor stadium.
“The way COVID-19 cases increase and people receive hypoxia or low oxygen levels in their blood, there is a shortage of oxygen supply,” said Avinash Chaturvedi, a facility doctor.
“We have turned this stadium into a COVID focus to deal with this situation.”
Despite this, hundreds of thousands of devout Hindus gathered on Wednesday to bathe in the Ganges River in the northern city of Haridwar, the third major bathing day of the week-long Kumbh Mela festival.
Sanjay Gunjyal, the festival’s police inspector general, said around 650,000 people had bathed on Wednesday morning.
“People are fined for not following social distancing in non-crowded ghats (bathing areas), but it is very difficult to fine people from the main ghats, which are very crowded,” he said.
According to a Reuters testimony, there was little evidence of social distancing or use of masks.
According to government data, more than a thousand cases have been reported in Haridwar district in the last two days.
Reports from Shilpa Jamkhandikar in Mumbai, Anushree Fadnavis in Haridwar, Saurabh Sharma in Lucknow, Amit Dave and Sumit Khanna in Ahmedabad and Rama Venkat in Bengaluru; Written by Alasdair Pal; Edited by Clarence Fernandez, Simon Cameron-Moore and Toby Chopra