The total number of Covid-19 infection cases in India surpassed 18 million on Thursday and has since set a world record, with daily infections and deaths hitting record highs, and the government rejected reports on its vaccine campaign.
About covid-19 in India
According to data from the Ministry of Health, India reported 379,257 new covid-19 cases and 3,645 new fatality rates on Thursday. For any country affected by a pandemic, this is by far the deadliest day.
Experts say that India’s best hope for containing the second deadly covid-19 wave is to vaccinate the vast population. On Wednesday, India opened registration to anyone over the age of 18 and began to receive injections from Saturday.
However, the country which is one of the largest vaccine producers in the world does not have stocks for an estimated 600 million people who are eligible.
Many people who tried to register said they failed. They complained on-the social media that they did not have a seat, or they simply couldn’t register online because the website crashed repeatedly.
In a statement late Wednesday, the government said: Statistics show that the system is operating normally, there is no crash or slow operation, and there are no malfunctions.
The government stated that more than 8 million people have registered for the vaccination, but it is not clear how many have received the vaccination.
Since the start of the vaccination campaign in January, about 9% of India’s population has received one dose of vaccination, first by health workers and then by the elderly.
The second wave of covid-19 infections has overwhelmed hospitals and crematoriums and prompted more and more overseas allies to send emergency equipment.
U.S. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren said on Twitter: The Covid outbreak in India is a humanitarian crisis.
I am writing to @pfizer, @moderna_tx, and @jnjnews to understand what steps they are taking to expand the global access of their vaccines to save lives and prevent the spread of the variants worldwide.
Two planes from Russia arrived in the capital Delhi on Thursday. Two of the planes carried 75 ventilators, 150 bedside monitors, 20 oxygen concentrators, and a total of 22 metric tons of medicines.
The White House said in a statement on Wednesday that the United States has shipped more than $100 million worth of supplies to India, including 1,000 oxygen cylinders, 15 million N95 masks, and 1 million rapid diagnostic tests. It said the supplies will begin to arrive on Thursday.
According to the White House, the United States has also redirected its own AstraZeneca production supplier orders to India, which will enable it to produce more than 20 million doses of the covid-19 vaccine.
United States’ Warning
India will receive the first batch of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine against covid-19 infection on May 1. Russia’s RDIF sovereign wealth fund sells Sputnik V globally. The company has signed agreements with five major Indian manufacturers, involving 850 million doses of vaccines a year.
Delhi reports that 19 people die of Covid-19 every four minutes. Ambulances have transferred the bodies of covid-19 victims to temporary crematorium facilities in parks and parking lots. The bodies are in rows of funeral pyres combustion.
The US State Department issued a warning on travel advisory to India due to the pandemic on Wednesday and approved the voluntary departure of family members of US government employees from India.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been criticized for allowing large-scale political gatherings and religious festivals to be held, which is a super-spreading event in recent weeks.
In the final stage of the eight-part election in West Bengal in eastern India, more than 8.4 million eligible voters will vote on Thursday, even though the state has witnessed a record increase in covid-19 cases.
The Pershing Square Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Vikram Patel, said in “The Hindu” newspaper: The people of this country have the right to have a complete and honest explanation of the causes of disasters that led to more than 1 billion people into a catastrophe.
The head of South Asia at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Udaya Regmi, said that the world is entering a critical period of a pandemic, and all adults need to be vaccinated as soon as possible.
Early models show that the B.1.617 virus variant detected in India has a higher growth rate than other variants in the country, which indicates that its transmission capacity has increased.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said in its weekly epidemiological update that India accounted for 38% of the 5.7 million cases reported to the world last week.
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