JOIN USHealth system collapses in UP as hospitals run out of oxygen, beds following surge in Covid 19 cases
As Covid 19 cases continued to set new records, the hospitals in Uttar Pradesh have run out of oxygen and ICU beds resulting in deaths of serious patients without even receiving treatment.
Many big hospitals in the state capital of Lucknow and other towns in the state have put up boards informing the attendants that they have run out oxygen and asked them to shift the patients elsewhere. Many others have been refusing to admit the patients citing unavailability of ICU beds and oxygen.
The crematoria in the state capital as well as in the other big towns in the state have been witnessing large numbers of cremations. In Lucknow new platforms had to be constructed for the pyres.
A local grave digger said that he had been digging six graves per day for the past few weeks. ''Earlier I used to dig only one grave daily,'' he said.
In fact such was the rush of bodies at the main Bhainsakund crematorium in the city that the authorities had to erect a tin wall around it to prevent the people from seeing the burning pyres.
UP reported over 37 thousand cases of Covid 19 in the past 24-hours, the highest one day surge, taking the total number of active cases in the state to over 2.5 lakh.
As many as 199 people died from Coronavirus infection in the state in the same period. So far over ten thousand people have died from the infection in the state. Lucknow was the worst affected in the state with 5682 cases of Covid 19 in the past 24-hours.
Heart-wrenching videos of attendants of patients crying outside the hospitals after being told that they did not have oxygen nor the bed have filled social media.
''The hospital says that it does not have oxygen....it has refused to admit my husband....his oxygen level has been going down,'' said a woman, whose husband was gasping for breath in an ambulance, outside a hospital in Lucknow. The health officials said that an Oxygen train was its way to Lucknow from Bokaro. The train is likely to arrive here on Saturday.
UP CM Yogi Adityanath, deputy CM Dinesh Sharma and several state ministers and legislators were either in home isolation or in the hospitals after being infected with the virus.
While Adityanath claimed that there was no paucity of oxygen or beds in the state, the opposition leaders sought to corner the BJP government over its alleged failure to handle the situation.
''BJP bothers only about elections not about the lives of the people,'' said Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav.