The coronavirus has a strong hold over India, and on Sunday, 3,689 new deaths were reported from the disease. More than 19.5 million people have been confirmed infected – 400,000 in the past 24 hours.
Additional supplies of medical equipment and oxygen arrived in Delhi over the weekend from France and Germany, among other countries, as part of a larger international effort to aid the country.
More help is on the way
The lack of oxygen has been acute for some time and the situation is desperate in several places in India with overcrowded hospitals. Recently, several patients died in a hospital in Delhi after running out of oxygen, according to local media reports.
“The world will not be safe until we are all,” said the French ambassador to India, Emmanuel Lenin, regarding European shipments.
The UK has also sent ventilators to India and announced that it will send more soon.
“We will send another shipment of 1,000 respirators very soon,” Foreign Minister Dominic Raab told the BBC.
Raab will meet his Indian counterpart, Subrahmaniyam Jaishankar, on Monday before the G7 meeting in London this week. Raab said Britain would do what it could to help India. However, it has been mentioned that the country currently does not have vaccine doses to spare.
Very low doses of the vaccine
India, with a population of 1.3 billion, opened the vaccination to all adults over the weekend, but the number of doses is limited and those under the age of 45 can only register online.
Experts believe that the country needs to think differently about vaccination, especially in poor areas where not everyone may have access to the internet.
Give people vaccines the same way we do our campaigns against polio and measles, says Hemant Shewad, a Bangalore public health expert.
India, a giant country of just over 1.3 billion people, has reported the second largest number of coronavirus cases in the world, in absolute terms: just over 19.5 million.
About 215,000 people have died, the fourth highest number in the world, after the United States, Brazil and Mexico, which have far fewer populations.
India has managed to get through the first stage of the pandemic relatively moderately, although many observers warn of the widespread lack of reports. In March, a second wave broke out, which meant a sharp increase in the number of injured and deaths.
The increase has been blamed on more contagious variants of the virus, but also on major cricket matches, the celebration of the religious feast Kumbh Mela and political campaign meetings.
Sources: Johns Hopkins University, AFP
More Stories
This is how much the President and Vice President of the United States earn
Melania on Donald Trump: “He is not Hitler” | the world
Major attack on Gaza – hospitals appeal for help