India is caught in the throes of a ferocious second wave of coronavirus, with the nation’s health authority reporting 360,960 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday alone, the seventh consecutive day with over 300,000 new infections.
Hospitals are overflowing, oxygen supplies are dwindling and ceaseless fires burn at crematoriums and makeshift funeral pyres, where families have been forced to forgo traditional ceremonies to make space for more bodies to be cremated.
Even the grim official numbers are likely a dramatic underestimation of India’s actual infection and death toll. Daily infections, which topped 350,000 last week, combined with a test-positivity rate of more than 20%, “says to me that the true number of infections is maybe three times that,” Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, said during a panel discussion on India’s second wave on Tuesday.
That lack of preparation extended to vaccinations. Although India is among the world’s biggest suppliers of vaccines, it has struggled to ramp up its own vaccination program. As of April 27, less than 2 percent of the population was fully vaccinated against the virus, according to Our World in Data.
In the meantime, if the virus continues to spread unchecked in India, new variants will continue to emerge experts warn, which presents a threat not just to India, but to the world.
Source-ABC
