Web Desk<\/p>\n
India recorded the world’s highest daily tally of coronavirus cases for the second day in a row on Friday, while daily deaths from COVID-19 also jumped by a record.<\/p>\n
With 332,730 new cases, India’s total caseload has now passed 16 million.<\/p>\n
Deaths in the past 24 hours also jumped to a record 2,263, the health ministry said, while officials across northern and western India, including the capital, New Delhi, warned most hospitals were full and running out of oxygen.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
The spike in cases came as a fire in a hospital in a suburb of Mumbai treating COVID-19 patients killed 13 people on Friday, the latest accident to hit a facility in India crowded with people infected with the coronavirus.<\/p>\n
“The fire at a COVID-19 hospital in Virar is tragic”, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Twitter, approving payouts for the victims’ relatives.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, 22 COVID-19 patients died at a public hospital in Maharashtra state when their oxygen supply ran out after a leak in the tank. At least nine coronavirus patients died in a hospital fire in Mumbai on March 26.<\/p>\n
Daily infections hit 332,730 on Friday, up from 314,835 the previous day when India set a new record, surpassing one set by the United States in January of 297,430 new cases. The US tally has since fallen.<\/p>\n
Delhi reported more than 26,000 new cases and 306 deaths, or about one fatality every five minutes, the fastest since the pandemic began.<\/p>\n
Medical oxygen and beds have become scarce, with major hospitals putting up notices saying they have no room for any more patients and police being deployed to secure oxygen supplies.<\/p>\n
Max Healthcare, which runs a network of hospitals in northern and western India posted an appeal on Twitter on Friday for emergency supplies of oxygen at its facility in Delhi.<\/p>\n
“We regret to inform you that we are suspending any new patient admissions in all our hospitals in Delhi till oxygen supplies stabilize,” the company said.<\/p>\n
Similar desperate calls from hospitals and ordinary people have been posted on social media for days this week across the country.<\/p>\n
Bhramar Mukherjee, a professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of Michigan in the United States, said it was now as if there was no social safety net for Indians.<\/p>\n
“Everyone is fighting for their own survival and trying to protect their loved ones. This is hard to watch,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Web Desk India recorded the world’s highest daily tally of coronavirus cases for the second day in a row on Friday, while daily deaths from COVID-19 also jumped by a record. With 332,730 new cases, India’s total caseload has now passed 16 million. Deaths in the past 24 hours also jumped to a record 2,263, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":15934,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,33,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-india","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20056"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20057,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20056\/revisions\/20057"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}