People prepare a funeral pyre for a family member who died of COVID-19 at a ground that has been converted into a crematorium for mass cremation of COVID-19 victims in New Delhi, India, Saturday, April 24, 2021. Indian authorities are scrambling to get medical oxygen to hospitals where COVID-19 patients are suffocating from low supplies. The effort Saturday comes as the country with the world’s worst coronavirus surge set a new global daily record of infections for the third straight day. The 346,786 infections over the past day brought India’s total past 16 million. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)
India virus patients suffocate amid oxygen shortage in surge
By Aijaz Hussain/AP
Altaf Qadri / AP
People prepare a funeral pyre for a family member who died of COVID-19 at a ground that has been converted into a crematorium for mass cremation of COVID-19 victims in New Delhi, India, Saturday, April 24, 2021. Indian authorities are scrambling to get medical oxygen to hospitals where COVID-19 patients are suffocating from low supplies. The effort Saturday comes as the country with the world’s worst coronavirus surge set a new global daily record of infections for the third straight day. The 346,786 infections over the past day brought India’s total past 16 million. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)
(Srinagar, India) — Indian authorities are scrambling to get medical oxygen to hospitals where COVID-19 patients are suffocating due to low supplies.
The government is coming under increasing criticism for what doctors say is its negligence in the face of a foreseeable public health disaster.
India has the world’s worst coronavirus surge.
Total cases have pushed beyond 16 million, behind only the United States.
Hospitals in New Delhi and some of the worst-hit states reported being critically short of beds and oxygen Saturday.
Families are waiting for days to cremate their loved ones at overburdened crematoriums, with many turning to makeshift facilities for last rites.
At least 189,000 people in India have died of COVID-19 since the pandemic began.
