As Covid Cases Surge, India May Need More Than Double The Medical Oxygen It Produces Share to Facebook Share to Linkedin Covid-19 patients wearing oxygen masks receives free oxygen in Langar. India faces shortage of medical oxygen. (Photo by Pradeep Gaur/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images) SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images As India faces a deadly second Covid-19 wave, 392,488 new cases were reported on Sunday by the health ministry. So far, less than 2% of the country’s 1.3 billion population has been fully vaccinated and hospitals are running out of supplies. “It's absolutely equivalent to a war,” says Rahul Tambe, an internal medicine doctor at Nanavati Super Specialty Hospital in Mumbai, India’s most populous city. A total of 215,542 deaths and nearly 19.6 million cases have been reported across the country.