by Jalees Andrabi and Glenda Kwek with Bhuvan Bagga NEW DELHI, India (AFP) — India’s capital New Delhi on Sunday extended its lockdown, as the country’s Covid-19 crisis grew with infections and deaths hitting record highs. The healthcare system has struggled to cope with the huge surge, with reports of severe oxygen and medicine shortages and patients’ families pleading for help on social media. India recorded 349,691 new cases and 2,767 deaths in the past […]
Tag: India
Indian Covid variant detected in Greece
ATHENS, Greece (AFP) — Greece has become the latest European nation to detect a case of the Covid-19 variant that has helped drive an explosion in infections in India, authorities said Sunday. The country’s public health agency said in a statement that the virus strain was detected in a foreign woman aged 33 who lives in the Athens area and had travelled to Dubai on April 4. The woman had a negative PCR virus test […]
UK sending ‘vital medical equipment’ to India to aid Covid fight
LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — Britain said Sunday it was sending life-saving medical equipment to India, including ventilators and oxygen concentrators, as the south Asian country reels from record numbers of daily Covid-19 infections and deaths. London will ship more than 600 pieces of equipment to New Delhi to support its fight against the virus, following a request from India and Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledging the UK would do “all it can” to help. […]
US to send virus-hit India Covid supplies ‘immediately’: W.House
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — The United States will “immediately” make supplies of material to make vaccines, as well as therapeutics, tests, ventilators and protective equipment available to India, facing a Covid-19 surge, the White House said Sunday. “The United States has identified sources of specific raw material urgently required for Indian manufacture of the Covishield vaccine that will immediately be made available for India,” a White House statement said. It listed other initiatives Washington […]
India’s death toll hits new record as Covid ‘tsunami’ worsens
NEW DELHI, India (AFP) — India’s daily coronavirus death toll set a new record Saturday as the government battled to get oxygen to hospitals overwhelmed by the hundreds of thousands of new daily cases. Twenty patients died in one night at one New Delhi hospital suffering from oxygen shortages, medical officials said. A Delhi court said that the new pandemic wave had become “a tsunami”. Queues of Covid-19 patients and their fearful relatives were […]
UAE suspends flights from India as Covid cases spike
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AFP) — The United Arab Emirates on Thursday suspended all flights from India, including transit passengers, as coronavirus cases in the country spiked to global records. Some 300 flights a week were operating between the UAE and India before the ban was announced, according to local media, making the air corridor one of the busiest in the world. “The decision to suspend flights came after studying and evaluating the epidemiological situation […]
Record infections overwhelm India’s hospitals
by Bhuvan Bagga with Ammu Kannampilly in Mumbai NEW DELHI, India (AFP) — Delhi hospitals issued desperate appeals for oxygen on Friday and 13 Covid patients died in a fire, as India’s healthcare system buckles under a new wave of infections. The surge in cases, blamed on a new virus variant and the government allowing “super spreader” public events to go ahead, saw another 330,000 new infections and 2,000 deaths reported in the past 24 […]
Covid-19 variant related to surging case numbers in India appears in Canada
By: Thomas I. Likness EBC News Service (Eagle News) — The first case of the so-called double mutation variant of the Covid-19 virus spotted in India has been identified in the provinces of Quebec and British Columbia, health authorities said. Quebec is reporting one case and another 39 cases have been occurred in BC. The virus has two different mutations of the original Covis-19 virus. These mutations have occurred separately, but the B.1.617 variant contains […]
India posts global record of 315,000 daily Covid cases
by Abhaya SRIVASTAVA NEW DELHI, India (AFP) — India posted a global record of almost 315,000 new Covid infections on Thursday as hospitals in New Delhi sent out desperate warnings that patients could die without fresh oxygen supplies. India’s long-underfunded health system is being stretched to the limit by a devastating second wave blamed on a “double mutant” variant and “super-spreader” mass gatherings. Health ministry data on Thursday showed 314,835 new infections in the past […]
22 Covid patients die in India after oxygen supply disrupted
MUMBAI, India (AFP) — Twenty-two Covid-19 patients at a hospital in India were killed on Wednesday when the oxygen supply to their ventilators was disrupted by a leak. The tragedy comes as India battles severe shortages of medical supplies during a fierce second wave of coronavirus infections. The 30-minute leak from an oxygen tanker stationed outside Dr Zakir Hussain Hospital in Nashik, about 200 kilometres north of Mumbai, cut off supply to the ventilators of […]
India Covid surge hits new record as oxygen runs short
by Aishwarya KUMAR Agence France Presse NEW DELHI, India (AFP) — India’s brutal new Covid outbreak set records on Wednesday with more than 2,000 deaths in 24 hours as hospitals in New Delhi ran perilously low on oxygen. India has been in the grips of a second wave of infections blamed on lax government rules and a new “double mutant” virus variant, adding almost 3.5 million new cases this month alone. Health ministry […]
Modi asks Indians to do better to stop virus amid new surge
by Bhuvan BAGGA NEW DELHI, India (AFP) — Prime Minister Narendra Modi late Tuesday called on Indians to step up their efforts to battle the coronavirus so that fresh lockdowns are not necessary, as the vast nation reels from an explosion of cases and the capital runs dangerously short of oxygen supplies. In his first address since the start of the record-breaking new wave of infections, Modi acknowledged that the nation of 1.3 billion people […]





