Severe oxygen shortage one of many challenges as India suffers the world’s worst surge of COVID-19 cases and deaths.
With life-saving oxygen in short supply, families are left on their own to ferry people sick with COVID-19 from hospital to hospital in search of treatment as India is engulfed in a devastating surge of infections. Too often, their efforts end in mourning.
On social media and in television footage, desperate relatives plead for oxygen outside hospitals or weep in the street for loved ones who died waiting for treatment.
India has been setting global daily records of new coronavirus infections, spurred by an insidious new variant that emerged here.
On Thursday, the number of new confirmed cases breached 400,000 for the second time since the devastating surge began last month. The 412,262 new cases pushed India’s official tally to more than 21 million, behind only the United States.
The Health Ministry also reported 3,980 new deaths on Thursday, bringing the confirmed total to 230,168 (behind only the US and Brazil). Health experts believe both figures are an undercount.
Leaders of Christian churches and ministries in India have been overwhelmed by cases and deaths among their staff and congregants amid the unavailability of treatment. In response, Friday was jointly declared a day of prayer and fasting by the leaders of the Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI), the National Council of Churches in India (NCCI), and the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI).
The current crisis is one of the darkest times in the history of the nation, according to Prabhu Singh, principal of the South Asia Institute of Advanced Christian Studies (SAIACS), an evangelical research institution in Bengaluru.
“One of the heartbreaking results of this intense second wave in the country is the tragic loss of senior leaders of Christian ...
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