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By Abhirup Roy and Rajendra Jadhav
MUMBAI (Reuters) – Oxygen supplies have been tight in some parts of India hit hard by the coronavirus, hospital and local government officials said, as India reported a record daily increase in cases for the second day in a row, recording 97,570 new cases. infections on Saturday.
With a total of cases of more than 4.65 million, India is the second most affected country in the world, behind only the United States, which has more than 6.4 million cases.
The total deaths from COVID-19 stood at 77,472, which places India in third place in the country death rankings. But the growth of infections in India is faster than anywhere else in the world, with cases increasing in urban and rural areas.
The western state of Maharashtra has been particularly hard hit, with a total of confirmed cases surpassing the 1 million mark late on Friday, making it the first state or province in the world to cross that mark.
If the state, which is the richest in India, were a country, it would rival Russia for the fourth highest number of coronavirus cases globally.
In some parts of the state, medical oxygen was becoming difficult to find. Dr. Amit Thadhani, medical director of Niramaya Hospitals in Panvel, a suburb of India’s financial capital, Mumbai, said the shortage in his area was acute.
“The problem is that the gas stations are not receiving oxygen supply from the manufacturers. The supplies are extremely limited,” Thadhani said.
“If we order 50 cylinders, we can get between 5 and 7.”
An official with the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation in a neighboring suburb said they had received reports from various hospitals about declining oxygen supplies and had made requests to state authorities. “Demand has increased in recent days due to the increase in cases,” the official said.
The Corporation’s commissioner, Abhijit Bangar, was not immediately available for comment.
Government officials and experts said the steady increase in cases in Maharashtra and other parts of the country was likely due to the restart of economic activity, local festivals and fatigue from the lockdown.
“I am very disappointed with the pandemic situation in India,” Bhramar Mukherjee, a professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of Michigan, who has been closely following the COVID situation in India, said on Twitter.
“It is getting worse every week, but a large part of the nation seems to have made the decision to ignore this crisis,” he said.
(Additional reporting and writing by Devjyot Ghoshal; edited by Edwina Gibbs, William Maclean)
