Via The Guardian: India suffers worst day of pandemic with record number of cases and deaths. Excerpt:
India has suffered its worst day yet of the pandemic, as both new Covid-19 cases and deaths break previous records and crematoriums in Delhi become so overloaded with bodies that they are being forced to build makeshift funeral pyres on spare patches of land.
On Wednesday morning, India reported 360,960 new cases in the previous 24 hours, the largest single-day increase in the world, taking India’s total to nearly 18 million. A further 3,293 deaths, the deadliest day so far, took the death toll to 201,187.
Dellhi is under lockdown until at least next week but deaths in the capital continue to climb in record numbers, with another 381 succumbing to Covid-19 on Tuesday. The city’s crematoriums and graveyards struggled to cope with the sheer number of bodies, running out of both space and wood for funeral pyres. Relatives of the dead sat with bodies for up 20 hours outside some crematoriums waiting to perform the last rites on their loved ones.
Outside some crematoriums, dozens of dead bodies waiting to be cremated were laid out on the pavements, covered with sheets and flowers in Delhi’s baking heat.
Many believe the real death toll in the capital and across India is far higher than official figures, as authorities have been accused of skewing the data to downplay the tragedy. Many people have also been in home quarantine and so not officially registered as Covid-19 deaths. In Delhi, 3,472 Covid-protocol funerals have taken place over the past week, but officially only 2,127 people died of coronavirus in this period.
Jayant Malhotra, co-founder of Sant Shiv Sewa foundation, which has been assisting people with cremations in Delhi for free during the pandemic, said the number of bodies his organisation was called to cremate or bury had gone from one every few days to 40 every day in recent weeks.
