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Friday, March 29, 2024

#Resign_PM_Modi cry Indians as COVID peak yet to come

A twitter user wrote while demanding resignation from Modi: "‘From Mandir Wahi Banega’ chants swapping to ‘Oxygen Kab Milega’ cries now. Flood of lifeless bodies, Weeping family members. Hopefully everyone realizes, what actually has been going on in last 7 years."

Indians on social media have demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for failing to curb COVID spread in the India.

They have pointed out that PM Modi was not able to introduce any measures that could have helped the country. Pictures showing Valabhai Patel’s 3000 Crore (INR) statue have been circulating with the caption that Modi should have prioritized health sector.

Moreover, twitterati have also criticized the ruling Bhartya Janata Party who has been holding rallies amid COVID-19 crisis.

India’s toll from the coronavirus surged past 200,000 on Wednesday, the country’s deadliest day, as shortages of oxygen, medical supplies and hospital staff compounded a record number of new infections.

The second wave of infections has seen at least 300,000 people test positive each day for the past week, overwhelming healthcare facilities and crematoriums and fueling an increasingly urgent international response.

The last 24 hours brought 360,960 new cases for the world’s largest single-day total, taking India’s tally of infections to nearly 18 million. It was also the deadliest day so far, with 3,293 fatalities carrying the toll to 201,187.

Experts believe the official tally vastly underestimates the actual toll in a nation of 1.35 billion, however.

The world is entering a critical phase of the pandemic and needs to have vaccinations available for all adults as soon as possible, said Udaya Regmi, South Asia head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).

“This is both an ethical and public health imperative,” he added. “As variants keep spreading, this pandemic is far from over until the whole world is safe.”

Read more: India’s COVID catastrophe – A wake up call for Pakistan

Ambulances lined up for hours in the capital, New Delhi, to take the bodies of COVID-19 victims to makeshift crematorium facilities in parks and parking lots, where bodies burned on rows of funeral pyres.

Coronavirus sufferers, many struggling for breath, flocked to a Sikh temple on the city’s outskirts, hoping to secure some of its limited supplies of oxygen.

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Hospitals in and around the capital said oxygen remained scarce, despite commitments to step up supplies.

“We make hundreds of calls and send messages every day to get our daily quota of oxygen,” Dr Devlina Chakravarty, of the Artemis hospital in the suburb of Gurgaon, wrote in the Times of India newspaper.

Peak Yet to Come in India

While commenting on the US aid to India, the U.S. State Department’s coordinator for global COVID-19 response, Gayle Smith, said: “We all need to understand that we are still at the front end of this. This hasn’t peaked yet.

“So this is going to require determination…We’re going to work really hard for some time, but we’re confident we can do it,” she said. “We anticipate that at the height of this kind of complex emergency, it’s going to be very fluid for a while as things fall into place. We are collectively going to have to be very agile and very nimble.”

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Jeremy Konyndyk, global COVID-19 adviser for USAID, said the agency was concerned about the situation in countries in the same region as India and wanted to support both India’s capacity to get the situation under control and the wider region.

He said the United States was providing some badly needed raw materials to the Serum Institute of India to allow it to scale up the production of the AstraZeneca vaccine there.

Aside from the United States, countries including Britain and Germany have pledged support, while the World Health Organization said it was working to deliver 4,000 oxygen concentrators, calling India’s plight “beyond heartbreaking”.

Two Indian government sources told Reuters earlier on Tuesday that New Delhi expects to secure the biggest chunk of the 60 million AstraZeneca (AZN.L) COVID-19 vaccine doses the United States will share globally.

Read more: Indians not so scientific as they claim to be

On Monday, senior U.S. officials said an agreement between the United States and three of its closest Indo-Pacific partners to produce up to a billion coronavirus vaccine doses in India by the end of 2022 to supply other Asian countries were “still on track,” despite the current crisis in the country.

GVS with additional input from Reuters.