(Corrects spelling of Telangana state in para 5)
NEW DELHI, May 2 (Reuters) - India s new coronavirus cases dipped marginally on Sunday but deaths due to the infection jumped by a record 3,689, with one more state going into lockdown as the nation s creaky healthcare system is unable to cope with a massive caseload.
Authorities reported 392,488 new cases in the previous 24 hours to push total cases to 19.56 million. So far, the virus has killed 215,542 people.
Indian hospitals, morgues and crematoriums have been overwhelmed as the country has reported more than 300,000 daily cases for more than 10 days straight. Many families have been left on their own to scramble for medicines and oxygen.
The variant has since been identified in other countries, including the United States.
On Friday, the White House announced that it would restrict travel from India as the country works to counter its surge of Covid-19 infections. We are rushing aid to India, Klain said during an interview on CBS program Face the Nation.
Klain said that the U.S. has sent therapeutics, rapid diagnostic test kits, ventilators and protective equipment to the world s largest democracy as well as raw materials crucial for vaccine production. Our U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai is going to the WTO next week to start talks on how we can get this vaccine more widely distributed, more widely licensed, more widely shared, he said when asked if the Biden administration would relax patent protections on the coronavirus vaccine.
BEIJING (BLOOMBERG) - A social media post by China s top law enforcement body juxtaposing the country s successful launch of a module into space with grim cremation pyres in India was deleted after it sparked online criticism in China.
Photos of the Tianhe module launch and its fuel burn-off were compared with what appeared to be a mass outdoor cremation in India, and captioned China lighting a fire versus India lighting a fire .
The post on Saturday (May 1) by the Communist Party s Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission on its official Sina Weibo account was accompanied by a hashtag noting that new Covid-19 cases in India had surpassed 400,000 a day.
India sets pandemic record with more than 400K new cases; Fauci says crisis is like a war
By The Washington Post
By Joanna Slater
NEW DELHI - In sheer numbers, it is the worst surge since the pandemic began - and it is still gathering speed.
After a devastating week of soaring infections, India reported more than 400 000 new cases on Saturday, a global record.
Experts believe that number will climb even higher in the coming days, an unimaginable burden for a health system already under siege with hospitals issuing pleas for oxygen.
India s experience underscores a sobering paradox: Even as the United States and Europe move away from the darkest days of the pandemic, other countries are engaged in a desperate struggle against the virus.