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A new record of Covid-19 contamination was broken in India on Sunday, May 2, with 400,000 new cases in 24 hours. International aid is pouring in, but the situation of hospitals remains extremely difficult.
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In India, the emergency department of a New Delhi hospital, filmed by France Télévisions teams, is totally saturated. He is on the front line against the Covid-19 epidemic. Inside, the wards are crowded, and the patients glued to each other. Some, in critical situations, do not even have a bed and are obliged to be treated while seated.
A young man knocked on the doors of 13 hospitals before eventually finding a place in that hospital to treat his mother. “I arrived just after a man died, it was his departure that freed up a place and oxygen for my mother”, he confides. Under tension, the relatives of the sick are all at their wit’s end. Due to lack of space, a patient was installed in a storage room; his life hangs on a cylinder of oxygen, bought by his family. Normally, these emergencies can accommodate up to 45 patients; they are now more than double.
Intensive care is also functioning at its maximum capacity. For the past month, Dr. Sumit Ray, head of the intensive care unit, and his team have had no choice but to sort the sick. “We give priority to the youngest patients, rather than the oldest”, he explains. The ward is in dire need of ventilators, which help patients breathe. Five pregnant women, in critical condition, are also hospitalized in this department.
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