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Relentless New Wave Sends India Covid Death Toll Past 200,000

India is reeling from one of the world's worst coronavirus outbreaks, which has pushed its healthcare infrastructure to the brink.
India is reeling from one of the world's worst coronavirus outbreaks, which has pushed its healthcare infrastructure to the brink.
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Relentless New Wave Sends India Covid Death Toll Past 200,000

India is reeling from one of the world's worst coronavirus outbreaks, which has pushed its healthcare infrastructure to the brink.
India is reeling from one of the world's worst coronavirus outbreaks, which has pushed its healthcare infrastructure to the brink.

India's coronavirus death toll shot past 200,000 Wednesday as a relentless wave of new cases swamped hospitals and sent desperate families out into the streets of the capital in search of oxygen supplies and medicine.

Infection and death rates are soaring in the vast country of 1.3 billion people, in contrast with the United States and some European nations which are taking tentative steps back towards normal life.

The virus has now killed more than 3.1 million people worldwide, with India driving the latest surge, recording 360,000 new infections -- a global record -- and more than 3,000 deaths on Wednesday.

Offering a glimmer hope, the co-founder of BioNTech -- which developed a Covid-19 vaccine with Pfizer -- said he is confident the shot works against the variant that is plaguing India.

In the capital New Delhi, car parks have been converted to crematoriums and the soaring body count has sparked a shortage of wood for funeral pyres.

Desperate relatives of the sick are crowding outside hospitals and pharmacies in search of treatment and medicines, often in vain.

Arriving in cars, rickshaws and ambulances, patients and their families desperate for oxygen flocked to a tent outside a Sikh place of worship on the outskirts of the capital this week.

Priyanka Mandal, 30, had been searching for oxygen for her mother since she became sick a week ago.

"Medicines are also not available... I've visited five, six big medical stores," she told AFP.

"No matter how much time it takes, I have to wait here... I only have my mum."

'Auspicious' full moon
Despite the rising cases, on Tuesday around 25,000 people took part in the final bathing day at the Kumbh Mela religious gathering in the northern town of Haridwar, drawn to the banks of the Ganges by an "auspicious" full moon, festival official Harbeer Singh told AFP.

The gathering has attracted millions of pilgrims, mostly without masks, sparking criticism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu-nationalist government for allowing it to go ahead.

A variant of the virus feared to be contributing to the catastrophic wave in India has now been found in more than a dozen countries, the World Health Organization said Tuesday.

But the WHO has stopped short of saying it is more transmissible, deadly or able to dodge vaccine protections.

Many nations have rushed to help, sending desperately needed oxygen and aid.

As part of the global effort, Singapore said Wednesday it had sent two plane-loads of oxygen supplies, and Germany will deliver 120 ventilators and plans to set up oxygen production.

Russia said it was sending emergency help to the country -- including oxygen support, ventilators and medicine -- while Switzerland was sending $1 million (827,000 euros) in aid for hospitals.

India also appears to be a leading contender for some of the millions of AstraZeneca vaccine doses the United States has said it will export.

And Ugur Sahin, the co-founder of BioNTech, said the vaccine his company jointly developed with Pfizer appears to protect against the Indian variant.

"We are still testing the Indian variant, but the Indian variant has mutations that we have already tested for and which our vaccine works against, so I am confident," said Sahin.

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Monster Hurricane Milton Threatens an Already Battered Florida

The streets are nearly empty as Hurricane Milton churns in the Gulf of Mexico on October 07, 2024 in Tampa, Florida. (Getty Images via AFP)
The streets are nearly empty as Hurricane Milton churns in the Gulf of Mexico on October 07, 2024 in Tampa, Florida. (Getty Images via AFP)
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Monster Hurricane Milton Threatens an Already Battered Florida

The streets are nearly empty as Hurricane Milton churns in the Gulf of Mexico on October 07, 2024 in Tampa, Florida. (Getty Images via AFP)
The streets are nearly empty as Hurricane Milton churns in the Gulf of Mexico on October 07, 2024 in Tampa, Florida. (Getty Images via AFP)

The Category 4 Hurricane Milton was expected to grow larger on Tuesday as it threatened Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula on its way to Florida, where more than a million people were ordered to evacuate from its path.

The densely populated west coast of Florida, still reeling from the devastating Hurricane Helene less than two weeks ago, braced for landfall on Wednesday.

The US National Hurricane Center projected the storm was likely to hit near the Tampa Bay metropolitan area, home to more than 3 million people and where some evacuees rushed to dispose of mounds of debris left behind by Helene on their way out of town.

With maximum sustained winds of 155 mph (250 kph), Milton was downgraded from a category 5 to a category 4 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, according to the US National Hurricane Center's latest advisory early on Tuesday.

While fluctuations in intensity are expected, Milton is forecast to remain an extremely dangerous hurricane through landfall in Florida, according to the hurricane center. That means catastrophic damage will occur, including power outages expected to last days.

Fed by warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico, Milton became the third-fastest intensifying storm on record in the Atlantic Ocean, the Hurricane Center said, as it surged from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane in less than 24 hours.

Its path from west to east was also unusual, as Gulf hurricanes typically form in the Caribbean Sea and make landfall after traveling west and turning north.

"It is exceedingly rare for a hurricane to form in the western Gulf, track eastward, and make landfall on the western coast of Florida," said Jonathan Lin, an atmospheric scientist at Cornell University. "This has big implications since the track of the storm plays a role in determining where the storm surge will be the largest."

The Hurricane Center forecast storm surges of 10 to 15 feet (3 to 4.5 meters) along a stretch of coastline north and south of Tampa Bay.

Jamie Rhome, deputy director of the National Hurricane Center, said Milton was expected to grow in size before making landfall on Wednesday, putting hundreds of miles of coastline within the storm surge danger zone.

Milton was likely to remain a hurricane for its entire journey across the Florida peninsula, Rhome told a Monday news briefing.

As of 10 a.m. CDT on Tuesday, the eye of the storm was 65 miles (105 km) north-northeast of Progreso, a Mexican port near the Yucatan state capital of Merida, and 585 miles (840 km) southwest of Tampa, moving east at nine mph (15 kph).

Milton was expected to pound the northern edge of the Yucatan Peninsula in the early hours of Tuesday.

The area is home to the picturesque colonial-era city of Merida, population 1.2 million, several Maya ruins popular with tourists and the port of Progreso.

In Florida, counties along the western coast ordered people in low-lying areas to take shelter on higher ground.

Pinellas County, which includes St. Petersburg, said it ordered the evacuation of more than 500,000 people. Lee County said 416,000 people lived in its mandatory evacuation zones. At least six other coastal counties ordered evacuations including Hillsborough County, which includes the city of Tampa.

With one final day for people to evacuate on Tuesday, local officials raised concerns of traffic jams and long lines at gas stations.

Relief efforts remain ongoing throughout much of the US Southeast in the wake of Helene, a Category-4 hurricane that made landfall in Florida on Sept. 26, killed more than 200 people and caused billions of dollars in damage across six states.