Crematoria so overwhelmed they are melting: How COVID-19 has hit India worst of all
With hospitals full in most major centres, the streets outside have become crowded with COVID-19 patients gasping for air
May 26, 2021 • 15 hours ago • 4 minute read • 22 Comments
Relatives stand next to the burning pyre of a man who died from the coronavirus disease during his cremation at a crematorium ground in Srinagar May 25, 2021. Photo by Danish Ismail / Reuters
Just as the developed world begins its slow climb out of the hell of COVID-19, the pandemic has struck India with apocalyptic force, killing more people with greater speed than at almost any point in the last 14 months. In any other context, the carnage sweeping India would be generating global attention on a level with the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak or the 1992 Somalian famine. But with much of the world focused on its own COVID-19 crisis, the Indian tragedy is largely getting overlooked.
Below, how COVID-19’s worst chapter is playing out right now in India.
Crematoria are so overwhelmed with bodies they are beginning to melt
For all the millions of lives taken by COVID-19, the world has largely been spared the spectacle of mass graves — the signature of so many prior pandemics. Not in India.
As case rates hit their peak last month in cities such as Delhi, crematoriums have set up impromptu pyres to service traffic jams of ambulances delivering new bodies, and The Associated Press reported that authorities were getting requests to fell trees in city parks for emergency kindling.
Bodies, some of which are believed to be Covid-19 victims, are seen partially exposed in shallow sand graves following heavy rains at a cremation ground in Uttar Pradesh, India. Gravediggers at the site said that there was a threefold increase in the number of bodies arriving for burials and cremations since April. Photo by Ritesh Shukla/Getty Images
“Before the pandemic, we used to cremate eight to 10 people (daily),” Jitender Singh Shunty, head of a crematorium in New Delhi, told a CNN crew on May 1. “Now, we are cremating 100 to 120 a day.” In Gujarat, crematoria had begun to melt and collapse under the stresses of running all-out 24 hours a day.
At a current weekly average of 4,000 COVID-19 deaths per day, each week India loses as many citizens to COVID-19 as the 25,000 that have been claimed in Canada since the pandemic’s inception 14 months ago. And whereas Canada is an aging country directly within the demographic sights of COVID-19, India has a median age of only 26.8 years.
Other countries have been harder hit, but not like this
On April 1, 2020 — when the ferocity of COVID-19 had already spooked much of the world into strict pandemic lockdowns — the worldwide daily COVID-19 death rate stood at 4,193. On the 24 hours of May 18, the COVID-19 death rate in India hit 4,529.
This week, with more than 300,000 recorded COVID-19 fatalities to date, India became the third hardest-hit country in the world, behind only the United States and Brazil.
Hospital staff take out a body from an ambulance at a mortuary in New Delhi on May 24, 2021, the day India passed more than 300,000 deaths from COVID-19. Photo by Money Sharma/AFP
Proportionally, this may not seem all that out-of-the-ordinary for a country of 1.4 billion, but it’s the suddenness of those deaths that have made COVID-19 particularly traumatic to India.
For the first weeks of 2021, Indian COVID-19 deaths were low enough to reach double digits. On Feb. 8, they hit a low of 78, which was almost exactly the same as the 70 Canadians killed by COVID-19 that day.
A graph of daily COVID-19 fatalities in India. COVID-19 was relatively docile in India prior to a sudden, sharp spread in April unlike anything yet seen. Photo by covid19india.org
But then, starting in April, India began to be hit with a surge that is beyond anything yet experienced. That month, in just one three-week period, new infections rose by 400 per cent and deaths rose by 500 per cent.
For a disease whose chief risk to public health is that it overwhelms health-care systems, India’s hospitals have been ravaged. In major centres such as Delhi, hospitals are full and turning away patients, leading to scenes of COVID-19 patients gathered outside on the street and gasping for air as their families beg for oxygen. “We have been roaming around for three days searching for a bed,” one man, seated next to his immobile wife on the pavement, told Reuters. In some areas, oxygen tankers have needed to be placed under police escort to protect them from looters.
Indian ward attendant Kishan Singh, 43, prepares to attach oxygen cylinders at a designated coronavirus treatment centre, in Rajasthan, India. Photo by Rebecca Conway/Getty Images
“Popular belief in the country, from the public to policymakers, was that India will not have a second wave — and unfortunately that let the guard down,” K. Srinath Reddy, an epidemiologist who advises the Indian government on COVID-19, told NPR in late April.
Tens of thousands of additional COVID-19 deaths may be occurring without official notice
On the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic, India had one doctor for every 1,445 citizens. In Canada, that figure is closer to one doctor for every 384 citizens.
A swamped medical system has meant many Indians dying at home from COVID-19 after being unable to reach medical care. Others are never able to have their COVID-19 diagnosis confirmed. Others still aren’t directly killed by COVID-19, but are the peripheral victims of a pandemic that has plunged even the most basic medical supplies into critical shortages.
A health worker ties a banner notice on the gate of a primary health centre about non-availability of the Covid-19 coronavirus vaccine in Hyderabad on May 24, 2021. Photo by Noah Seelam/AFP
“I believe the actual number of people dying of COVID is two to three times higher than what the government is reporting,” Manas Gumta, general secretary of the Association of Health Service Doctors in West Bengal, told The Guardian in late April.
This week, an analysis by The New York Times attempted to guess India’s true death rate based on what is known about COVID-19 fatality numbers. The conclusion was that the disease has killed anywhere between 600,000 and 4.2 million.
• Email: thopper@postmedia.com | Twitter: TristinHopper
With hospitals full in most major centres, the streets outside have become crowded with COVID-19 patients gasping for air
May 26, 2021 • 15 hours ago • 4 minute read • 22 Comments
Just as the developed world begins its slow climb out of the hell of COVID-19, the pandemic has struck India with apocalyptic force, killing more people with greater speed than at almost any point in the last 14 months. In any other context, the carnage sweeping India would be generating global attention on a level with the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak or the 1992 Somalian famine. But with much of the world focused on its own COVID-19 crisis, the Indian tragedy is largely getting overlooked.
Below, how COVID-19’s worst chapter is playing out right now in India.
Crematoria are so overwhelmed with bodies they are beginning to melt
For all the millions of lives taken by COVID-19, the world has largely been spared the spectacle of mass graves — the signature of so many prior pandemics. Not in India.
As case rates hit their peak last month in cities such as Delhi, crematoriums have set up impromptu pyres to service traffic jams of ambulances delivering new bodies, and The Associated Press reported that authorities were getting requests to fell trees in city parks for emergency kindling.
“Before the pandemic, we used to cremate eight to 10 people (daily),” Jitender Singh Shunty, head of a crematorium in New Delhi, told a CNN crew on May 1. “Now, we are cremating 100 to 120 a day.” In Gujarat, crematoria had begun to melt and collapse under the stresses of running all-out 24 hours a day.
At a current weekly average of 4,000 COVID-19 deaths per day, each week India loses as many citizens to COVID-19 as the 25,000 that have been claimed in Canada since the pandemic’s inception 14 months ago. And whereas Canada is an aging country directly within the demographic sights of COVID-19, India has a median age of only 26.8 years.
Other countries have been harder hit, but not like this
On April 1, 2020 — when the ferocity of COVID-19 had already spooked much of the world into strict pandemic lockdowns — the worldwide daily COVID-19 death rate stood at 4,193. On the 24 hours of May 18, the COVID-19 death rate in India hit 4,529.
This week, with more than 300,000 recorded COVID-19 fatalities to date, India became the third hardest-hit country in the world, behind only the United States and Brazil.
Proportionally, this may not seem all that out-of-the-ordinary for a country of 1.4 billion, but it’s the suddenness of those deaths that have made COVID-19 particularly traumatic to India.
For the first weeks of 2021, Indian COVID-19 deaths were low enough to reach double digits. On Feb. 8, they hit a low of 78, which was almost exactly the same as the 70 Canadians killed by COVID-19 that day.
But then, starting in April, India began to be hit with a surge that is beyond anything yet experienced. That month, in just one three-week period, new infections rose by 400 per cent and deaths rose by 500 per cent.
For a disease whose chief risk to public health is that it overwhelms health-care systems, India’s hospitals have been ravaged. In major centres such as Delhi, hospitals are full and turning away patients, leading to scenes of COVID-19 patients gathered outside on the street and gasping for air as their families beg for oxygen. “We have been roaming around for three days searching for a bed,” one man, seated next to his immobile wife on the pavement, told Reuters. In some areas, oxygen tankers have needed to be placed under police escort to protect them from looters.
“Popular belief in the country, from the public to policymakers, was that India will not have a second wave — and unfortunately that let the guard down,” K. Srinath Reddy, an epidemiologist who advises the Indian government on COVID-19, told NPR in late April.
Tens of thousands of additional COVID-19 deaths may be occurring without official notice
On the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic, India had one doctor for every 1,445 citizens. In Canada, that figure is closer to one doctor for every 384 citizens.
A swamped medical system has meant many Indians dying at home from COVID-19 after being unable to reach medical care. Others are never able to have their COVID-19 diagnosis confirmed. Others still aren’t directly killed by COVID-19, but are the peripheral victims of a pandemic that has plunged even the most basic medical supplies into critical shortages.
“I believe the actual number of people dying of COVID is two to three times higher than what the government is reporting,” Manas Gumta, general secretary of the Association of Health Service Doctors in West Bengal, told The Guardian in late April.
This week, an analysis by The New York Times attempted to guess India’s true death rate based on what is known about COVID-19 fatality numbers. The conclusion was that the disease has killed anywhere between 600,000 and 4.2 million.
• Email: thopper@postmedia.com | Twitter: TristinHopper
