New Delhi: Covering the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic as it tore through Indian cities, towns and villages was overwhelming at times. Patients died at home, in their cars on the way to hospital and outside emergency wards because there were no beds for them.
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The grounds are prepared for a mass cremation of COVID-19 victims. | India has recorded more than 28 million coronavirus cases, and daily new cases sometimes exceeded 400,000, although by Thursday, June 3, that had come down to around 135,000. On a per capita basis its COVID-19 death toll is relatively low, but deaths were rising while in Europe and the United States they are in decline.
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Patients suffering from COVID-19 wait to be admitted outside the casualty ward at Guru Teg Bahadur hospital, amidst the spread of the disease in New Delhi, India, April 23, 2021.
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Some Indians said what made the devastation of April and May harder to accept was that they believed the worst of the pandemic was over in February, when the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths were far below today's. In the middle of that month, the number of daily new cases was around 9,000. Election rallies went ahead, markets teemed with people and huge crowds of worshippers attended religious festivals. In much of the rest of the world, large gatherings were forbidden as governments fought to slow the spread of the virus.
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My trip to Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital in New Delhi came as a shock. I had been to the same hospital - the largest in the capital - a few months back, and at that time things were organized and under control. This time, as I stepped into the emergency room, it was different. There were scenes of chaos. Gasping for air, two men wearing oxygen masks shared a bed. People struggled to get oxygen and the attention of medics, themselves overwhelmed with the number of new patients. Some relatives pleaded with me to diagnose their loved one, mistaking me for a doctor because I was wearing PPE gear. Others who saw my camera urged me to document the pain their family was suffering.
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Family members mourn after Shayam Narayan is declared dead outside the COVID-19 casualty ward, at Guru Teg Bahadur hospital, amidst the spread of the disease in New Delhi, India, April 23, 2021.
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People wait to cremate victims. | At graveyards and crematoriums, the scenes were grim. Mass cremations took place in crematorium parking lots to cope with the number of bodies, and the intense heat the pyres generated sometimes prevented me from getting close to take photographs and video. At graveyards, multiple burials were held at the same time.
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Men wearing protective suits stand next to the body of their relative. | On several occasions I put down my cameras to attend prayers, as I knew the victims being buried that day. I only found out about their deaths when I met common acquaintances there. I also visited rural areas, where some hospitals were close to collapsing under the number of patients seeking treatment for COVID-19.
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A man stands next to the body of his wife. | At the emergency ward of Bijnor Government Hospital, four people with breathing difficulties died in front of me in less than an hour. "There is no doubt about it, the number of infected persons is quite large," Ramakant Pandey, the top district official in Bijnor, told me on the day of my visit. Manoj Sen, the medical superintendent of the hospital, this week said case numbers had fallen drastically.
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Outside a mortuary, a brother and sister dressed in identical blue uniforms of the bank where they worked consoled their mother after their father died. At a graveyard, a young man wailed as he begged his recently deceased father for forgiveness, believing it was he who had given him the virus.
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Manoj Kumar sits next to his mother, Vidhya Devi, who was suffering from a breathing problem as she receives oxygen support. | The pandemic has also brought out the best in people. Indians I have covered are doing extraordinary things, be it a 26-year-old doctor battling to save lives, or teams of Sikh volunteers dispensing free oxygen to people desperate to keep loved ones alive.
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A man walks after cremating his relative. | I have been a journalist for almost 14 years, witnessing tragedies around the globe. But I never thought I would see misery and death on this scale in New Delhi, the city I grew up in. At the height of the COVID-19 surge in May, 448 people in the city died from the disease in a single day.
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Urns containing ashes after final rites of people including those who died from complications related to COVID-19. | This is a battle with an invisible enemy, and it feels like there is nowhere to hide.
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People suffering from COVID-19 are treated inside an overcrowded casualty ward at a hospital in New Delhi, India, May 1, 2021.
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Roshan Lal, 48, a villager with a breathing difficulty rests in a cot as he receives treatment at a makeshift open-air clinic, amidst the spread of COVID-19, in Mewla Gopalgarh village, in Jewar district, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, India, May 16, 2021.
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