![]() Prime Minister Narendra Modi has approved the procurement of 100,000 portable oxygen concentrators, in addition to hundreds of new oxygen generation plants. ![]() Numerous states and cities have implemented new restrictions and shut down businesses in an attempt to contain the outbreak. India’s government is scrambling to take action as the virus spreads. This is the time to work for the nation, for humanity, and save lives.”Īn aerial view of the Seemapuri crematorium on April 29. “I am tired – but this is not the time to get tired. “We have cremated 55 bodies in the last five hours … (It) will be 100 by the end of the day,” he said on Wednesday morning. ![]() In between building the additional pyres and bringing out bodies, Shunty, the crematorium head, sits with grieving families to offer comfort and support. At the Seemapuri crematorium, a number of exhausted volunteers slumped against a wall, getting a little precious sleep before continuing with their work. “We start getting bodies in the morning and they keep coming in one after the other,” said Suman Kumar Gupta, an official at Delhi’s Nigambodh Ghat cremation site, on Wednesday.įor workers and volunteers at the crematorium, handling hundreds of bodies daily and witnessing a constant outpouring of anguish takes a heavy toll. This is double the official daily death toll for the city, and an indicator there may be a major underreporting problem. ![]() More than 3,600 people died.ĭelhi’s facilities have been cremating more than 600 bodies daily for the past week, according to the mayor of the North Delhi Municipal Corporation. India reported almost 380,000 new infections on Thursday, marking yet another global record for the highest single-day case count. “I think of the families that need cremation grounds, where bodies have been lying on the floor.”īurning funeral pyres of Covid-19 victims at a crematorium in India's capital on April 27. “Despite my devastation, I was luckier than most Indians,” Dutt added. “We had to call the police to cremate my father.” “When we went to cremate him, there was no space at the cremation ground – there was a physical fight that erupted between multiple families,” she said Wednesday. Many see no choice, as they jockey for space at crowded crematoriums.Ĭremation is considered an important part of Hindu funeral rites, due to the belief the body must be destroyed for the soul to proceed to reincarnation.īarkha Dutt, a columnist at the Washington Post, lost her father to Covid-19 this week after he was ferried to the hospital on a faulty oxygen cylinder. In the meantime, families are having to pay for the wood to burn their relatives’ bodies. On Tuesday, Jai Prakash, the mayor of North Delhi, wrote a letter to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, asking that the forest department provide a steady supply. So many fires have been lit in New Delhi that wood stocks are running low. In Surat, a city of six million people in Gujarat that is best known for its diamond-polishing industry, at least seven crematoriums and graveyards saw a more than threefold rise in the number of cremations and burials in April versus a year ago.An aerial image of a crematorium in New Delhi, India, on April 29. With overburdened hospitals and scant supplies of oxygen and drugs for an already creaky healthcare system, the numbers of cremations and burials reported by several major cities are far larger than official death tolls, interviews with crematorium and cemetery workers and a review of government data reveal. Cases early this month topped more than 400,000 a day, up from fewer than 10,000 reported earlier this year, for the world’s highest single-day figure and experts say even that figure is almost certainly conservative. From its capital, Delhi, to the western state of Gujarat and the southern tech city of Bengaluru, India has been overwhelmed by a surge in deaths after it was swept by a second wave of coronavirus infections.
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