SOS calls grow as corona cases surge in India

PUNE, India: Dire SOS pleas from doctors, patients and their loved ones in need of hospital beds, oxygen and medication have flooded social media platforms, foreign media reported.

In Pune, one of the worst-hit cities in India, the wailing sirens of ambulances have become a macabre feature of the city’s soundscape. In many parts of the country, family members are shedding tears of despair outside of hospitals as they beg for medical attention for their dying kin.

“We don’t have enough ward beds, we don’t have enough ICU beds, and we’re running out of ventilators,” said Sumit Ray, a critical care specialist at Holy Family Hospital in India’s capital city of New Delhi. “People are coming into the ER requiring huge amounts of oxygen support, and we were on the edge of running out.”

COVID-19 cases and deaths have been hitting records every two or three days. Deaths rose by more than 3,748, while 366,499 new cases were reported. Like many others in India, Ray is somewhat baffled by the seemingly sudden COVID-19 surge. In an unprecedented move, hundreds of scientists sent a plea on April 30 to Prime Minister Narendra Modi asking to ramp up data collection and allow access to already collected COVID-19 data. These scientists say more data are needed to understand how the coronavirus is spreading, manage the outbreak and predict what’s to come.

During the first wave of the pandemic in 2020, India reported over 90,000 daily new COVID-19 cases at its peak, with the highest single-day record at 97,894 on September 16. Daily case numbers then gradually declined to nearly 10,000 in early February.

In December, India recorded its first six cases of the highly infectious B.1.1.7 variant, which was first identified in the United Kingdom. Between February and March, genetic testing showed that the variant became dominant in India’s northern state of Punjab, appearing in 326 of 401 sequenced viral samples. In New Delhi, B.1.1.7 was present in half the samples sequenced toward the end of March compared with 28 percent two weeks earlier.

India’s own B.1.617 variant first identified in October in Maharashtra is now present in up to 60 percent of samples from some parts of this hard-hit state, according to Shahid Jameel, a virologist at Ashoka University in Sonipat, India. This variant is also spreading in Delhi, he said, in addition to other parts of India and the world.

While B.1.1.7 is thought to be highly transmissible and potentially more lethal than other known variants, it’s still unclear how contagious B.1.617 is and if it induces severe disease. This makes it challenging to assess its role in India’s increasingly grim situation. One glimmer of hope is that Covaxin, a COVID-19 vaccine administered in India, appears to be effective against the variant, according to a recent paper posted online April 23 at the preprint server bioRxiv.org.

An array of mathematical models predict that India’s surge will peak sometime between early and mid-May. Daily case numbers could rise to anywhere between 800,000 and 1 million.