Underreporting in India likely as Covid-19 Surges
India’s official tally of COVID-19 cases eclipsed 21 million last week with a new record of 412,262 cases announced last Thursday. The country reported nearly 4,000 deaths in the 24 hours preceding the announcement. At least 11 of those deaths were the direct result of equipment failure, reports The Times of India.
According to locals, these figures are gross underestimates to conceal the extent of the crisis.
“In some areas of rural Bihar, considerably less than 1% of infections were being detected,” says Murad Banaji, a mathematician and lecturer at Middlesex University in London.
“There has been tremendous data denial,” adds Bhramar Mukherjee, a biostatistician at the University of Michigan. “People didn’t want to believe, and the government didn’t want to believe, that this was actually going to explode.”
Mukherjee expects India’s Covid-19 caseload to peak in mid-May with as many as 1 million new cases a day.
To cope with the body count, playgrounds and parking lots are now mass cremation grounds. Officials in south Delhi have to obtain wood from neighboring states to sustain the pyres.
“The situation is very grim here,” says Dr. Aniket Sirohi, a physician working in south Delhi. “We are short of everything…I want to say to the world, ‘Help us, in any way you can.’”
Perhaps the most-needed resource is oxygen, the demand for which has increased by 700% over the past month.
Most hospitals in India do not have oxygen-generating plants. Thus, they are forced to rely on liquid oxygen, which is stored in cylinders and transported by tankers.
Last week, a sea route was established to transport liquid oxygen from Kuwait and Bahrain. Additional supplies, including oxygen, rapid tests, and components to manufacture the AstraZeneca vaccine, are en route from the United States and Europe.
In the meantime, India has teamed up with hundreds of other low-income nations to pressure the World Trade Organization to waive intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines. President Joe Biden endorses the proposal. However, vaccine makers and European nations who fear the economic repercussions and potential risk to human health oppose it. (click here to read more).
Author’s Note: With a population of more than 1.3 billion and a history of poor sanitation, it’s no surprise Covid-19 is surging in India. This would be a great opportunity for the United States to solidify an alliance. But Biden’s efforts are underwhelming and he doesn’t understand the opportunity.
Sources:
India hits another grim coronavirus record as oxygen demand jumps
WHO CARES WHAT IS HAPPENING THERE
Most of the people in India and I care.
Blessed be
Karma Singh
I care what’s happening there. This is a region that has long suffered from vitamin D deficiency a fact that grossly impairs many persons’ immune system. Here we are lighting our hair on fire over whether or not they will get the (not really a vaccine) jab when they could materially use a boatload of cheap prophylactic vitamin D and C, hydroxychloroquine, zinc, budesonide, oxygen, ivermectin and a good respiratory antibiotic. They probably have all of that on a shelf, but, instead we’re going to ship them COVID-19 vaccines at the expense of the United States and Indian governments because that will put put yet more billions of dollars into the pockets of the murderers who run world.
The problem is the enormous gab between the “official” reports, which your author parrots here, and the reality on the ground.
Videos from the main Ghat (open crematorium) in Delhi show it to be in use slightly less than is typical for this time of year with most fire pits empty and cold.
The “surgeance” is “case” numbers is exclusively due to random, enforced “testing” on the streets. As the “tests” will give a “positive” result if normal human DNA is detected, one can see how totally useless they are and why both the inventor of the PCR and all manufacturers state that it is unsuitable for diagnostic purposes.
Following the appointment of the government health minister to the board of directors of the Bill Gates company which manufactures his “vaccine” in India, mass enforced testing has been used to inflate vaccine sales.
In short, just as everywhere else in the world, there is no pandemic or even an epidemic and, surprise, surprise, no-one, to date, has ever been able to find the “virus” which “causes” the non-existent pandemic.
Your author should be sent on a training course in investigative journalism and your editor should be fired.
Blessed be
Karma Singh
I’m shocked , a conservative Republican that is concerned with under reported Covid numbers?
Catch up girlfriend, you’re completely out of step with the Republican Party talking points!
If they quit testing, they’d have less cases.
Duh…