CNN USA said that “India’s health care system and other essential services are close to collapse as a second coronavirus wave that started in mid-March tears through the country with devastating speed.”  Yesterday, Thursday, India saw the highest +332,503 new infections and an increase of+2,256 deaths in a day.

Hospitals are turning away patients who beg for more oxygen, while desperate families plead for beds and medicines such as remdesivir on social media.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the nation on Tuesday, acknowledging the country’s “very big battle” against Covid-19. He however appealed to states to “use a lockdown as their last option,” even as the capital New Delhi entered its first full day of a week-long lockdown, Jessie Yung and Vedika Sud report.

“The volume is humongous,” said Jalil Parkar, a senior pulmonary consultant at the Lilavati Hospital in Mumbai, which has had to convert its lobby into an additional Covid ward. “It’s just like a tsunami.”

CNN says the second wave is far more vicious than the first and experts say that the situation was created by complacency where the government relaxed measures that gave out a false sense of security to the general public. They soon started cinemas, weddings, ceremonies, and other massive meetings.  Within weeks, cases started to rise again climbing again, the Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan seemed to hastily declare that India was “in the endgame” of the pandemic, just when the cases started to rise again in March.

The Indian government did not pay heed to COVID health protocols and ignored warnings when cricket and other sport matches resumed, elaborate weddings were held and movie cinemas reopened.

Also in April, one of the biggest pilgrimages on Earth, the Hindu festival the Kumbh Mela, went ahead with over 2 million people attending.  CNN says that “PM Modi, who has a significant Hindu base, refrained from commenting on the Kumbh Mela and its COVID risks for weeks. He finally appealed to pilgrims to avoid congregating in Haridwar earlier this week. But for some, Modi’s message rang hollow, as he continued to hold massive political rallies ahead of parliamentary and local council elections in four states and one union territory.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is facing world criticism for poor management of COVID with health care COVID warriors fighting bravely in the forefront while his ow rallying was on until today, which he canceled in order to hold important discussions on the COVID crisis with state chief ministers.

State leaders express a hope that the prime minister will at least now take the catastrophe seriously.  They had been begging for life-saving oxygen and remdesivir which they claim the central government was holding back and even oxygen and remdesivir are being sold in the black market.  In the face of such callousness and corruption in a national calamity, who can save India?