Geneva, Switzerland:
The World Health Organization chief voiced alarm Monday at India’s record-breaking wave of Covid-19 instances and deaths, saying the organisation was rushing to enable address the crisis.
“The situation in India is beyond heartbreaking,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters.
His comments came as India battles a catastrophic coronavirus wave that has overwhelmed hospitals and crematoriums working at complete capacity.
A surge in current days has seen patients’ households taking to social media to beg for oxygen supplies and places of offered hospital beds, and has forced the capital New Delhi to extend a week-lengthy lockdown.
“WHO is doing everything we can, providing critical equipment and supplies,” Tedros mentioned.
He mentioned the UN well being agency was amongst other factors sending “thousands of oxygen concentrators, prefabricated mobile field hospitals and laboratory supplies.”
The WHO also mentioned it had transferred more than 2,600 of its specialists from numerous programmes, which includes polio and tuberculosis, to work with Indian well being authorities to enable respond to the pandemic.
The nation of 1.3 billion has develop into the most up-to-date hotspot of a pandemic that has killed more than 3 million folks worldwide, even as richer nations take methods towards normality with quickening inoculation programmes.
The US and Britain rushed ventilators and vaccine components to enable India climate the devastating crisis, whilst a variety of other nations also pledged assistance.
Since the virus that causes Covid-19 initial surfaced in China in late 2019, the illness has killed more than 3.1 million folks out of at least 147 million infected, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP.
Tedros on Monday lamented that international new case numbers have been increasing for the previous nine weeks straight.
“To put it in perspective,” he mentioned, “there were almost as many cases globally last week as in the first five months of the pandemic.”
The United States remains the worst-impacted nation, with some 572,200 deaths and more than 32 million infections, followed by Brazil and Mexico.
But India, in fourth spot, has in current days been driving the international case numbers.
The nation, which has recorded more than 195,000 deaths, registered 2,812 new deaths and 352,991 new infections on Monday alone — its highest tolls due to the fact the start out of the pandemic.
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