COVID: Public Health Experts Pen Concerns About Plasma to PSA VijayRaghavan 11/05/2021
A pouch of convalescent plasma from a person who recovered from COVID-19. Photo: Lindsey Wasson/Reuters
When the number of COVID-19 cases began to surge in many parts of India from late April, the Centre’s and various state government’s failure to anticipate the second wave, and the inability of the Indian people at large to withstand it without additional protections, became glaringly obvious. A shortage of oxygen and antiviral and palliative drugs soon followed. With government help out of sight, people took to the social media to coordinate the verification, discovery and supply of oxygen and drugs by themselves.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Covid-19 pandemic is a fire ripping the very heart of the Indian nation. In fact, the country’s crematoriums, where funeral pyres burn non-stop, can no longer accommodate the dead. Instead, bodies are being cremated in adjacent car parks and on pavements. “I used to cremate three to five bodies every day before the pandemic,” crematorium worker Ashu Rai told reporters, “but after this second wave, I am cremating more than 15 bodies a day alone.”
The country’s overburdened hospitals are unable to provide beds for Covid-19 patients, and effective treatment is hampered by a lack of necessary supplies of oxygen and other crucial medical supplies. “We need oxygen, we need drugs, we need basic medication, we need hospital supplies,” said ICU doctor Kamna Kakkar when asked by an Al Jazeera journalist what she and her colleagues would require in order to tackle the challenges they face at the coalface of the pandemic.