DREAD AND DESPAIR

Health services across states are on the verge of a breakdown. Patients are struggling to get hospital beds, Covid test reports are delayed by days and there is an acute scarcity of oxygen and vital drugs

- Sonali Acharjee

DELHI

The crematorium at Kalkaji, on April 16, had a line of plastic-covered people waiting outside. Only their eyes, burning with grief, were visible. They were members of 12 families who had lost their loved ones to Covid. “It took us two days of calling up friends, family and relatives just to get ventilator support for my mother. I also paid Rs 18,000 for Remdesivir treatment. By the time we got her to an ICU, she was in severe pulmonary distress and died within 18 hours,” says Suhasini Arora, a 21-year-old law student.

Delhi, which has experienced three waves of Covid before, has never seen anything like this. On April 19, the city’s positivity rate was 30 per cent, meaning every third person was testing positive. In November, the highest positivity rate was 11.03 per cent, with roughly the same number of daily tests being done. The city has also never seen so many active cases. On April 19, it was 76,887; at the peak of the last wave, it was 42,000. The single-day spikes are recordbreakers as well. The highest number of cases in 24 hours in 2020 was 8,593 on November 11. On April 20, it was over three times higher—28,395. “We are seeing many more young people getting infected. People took the disease too lightly,” says Dr Randeep Guleria, director, AIIMS Delhi.

Once cases began to drop, Covid-dedicated hospitals restarted non-Covid services, entrants from states with high case loads, such as Maharashtra and Kerala, were not screened and social events were allowed throughout March. The government also let the city down in terms of preparation. On April 21, Delhi was left with only 2,345 vacant beds, including 27 ICU beds; on April 19, the leading hospitals had an average of 11-16 hours of oxygen supply left.