Tag Archives: India

Mass cremations begin as India’s capital faces deluge of COVID-19 deaths

By Danish Siddiqui

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Delhi resident Nitish Kumar was forced to keep his dead mother’s body at home for nearly two days while he searched for space in the city’s crematoriums – a sign of the deluge of death in India’s capital where coronavirus cases are surging.

On Thursday Kumar cremated his mother, who died of COVID-19, in a makeshift, mass cremation facility in a parking lot adjoining a crematorium in Seemapuri in northeast Delhi.

“I ran pillar to post but every crematorium had some reason … one said it had run out of wood,” said Kumar, wearing a mask and squinting his eyes that were stinging from the smoke blowing from the burning pyres.

India recorded the world’s highest daily tally of 314,835 coronavirus infections on Thursday, with the second wave of the pandemic crushing its weak health infrastructure. In Delhi alone, where hospitals are running out of medical oxygen supplies, the daily rise is over 26,000.

People losing loved ones in the Indian capital, where 306 people have died of COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, are turning to makeshift facilities that are undertaking mass burials and cremations as crematoriums come under pressure.

Jitender Singh Shunty who runs a non-profit medical service, the Shaheed Bhagat Singh Sewa Dal, said as of Thursday afternoon 60 bodies had been cremated at the makeshift facility in the parking lot and 15 others were still waiting.

“No one in Delhi would have ever witnessed such a scene. Children who were 5 years old, 15 years old, 25 years old are being cremated. Newlyweds are being cremated. It’s difficult to watch,” said a teary-eyed Shunty.

Shunty, dressed in protective gear and a bright yellow turban, said last year during the peak of the first wave the maximum number of bodies he helped cremate in a single day was 18, while the average was eight to 10 a day.

On Tuesday, 78 bodies were cremated in that one place alone, he said.

Kumar said when his mother, a government healthcare worker, tested positive 10 days ago, the authorities could not find a hospital bed for her.

“The government is not doing anything. Only you can save your family. You are on your own,” he said.

(Writing by Aditi Shah, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)

India posts world record COVID cases with oxygen running out

By Neha Arora and Sachin Ravikumar

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India recorded the world’s highest daily tally of 314,835 COVID-19 infections on Thursday as a second wave of the pandemic raised new fears about the ability of crumbling health services to cope.

Health officials across northern and western India, including the capital, New Delhi, said they were in crisis, with most hospitals full and running out of oxygen.

Some doctors advised patients to stay at home, while a crematorium in the eastern city of Muzaffarpur said it was being overwhelmed with bodies, and grieving families had to wait their turn. A crematorium east of Delhi built funeral pyres in its parking lot.

“Right now there are no beds, no oxygen. Everything else is secondary,” said Shahid Jameel, a virologist and director of the Trivedi School of Biosciences at Ashoka University.

“The infrastructure is crumbling.”

Six hospitals in New Delhi had run out of oxygen, according to a tally shared by the city government, and the city’s deputy chief minister said neighboring states were holding back supplies for their own needs.

“It might become difficult for hospitals here to save lives,” Manish Sisodia said in a televised address.

Another 2,104 people died in the space of a day, taking India’s cumulative toll to 184,657, according to the health ministry data. The previous record rise in cases was in the United States, which had 297,430 new cases on one day in January, though its infection rate has since fallen sharply.

“INDIA WEEPS”

Television showed images of people with empty oxygen cylinders crowding refilling facilities, hoping to save relatives in hospital.

In the western city of Ahmedabad, a man strapped to an oxygen cylinder lay in the back of a car outside a hospital as he waited for a bed.

“Helplessness,” tweeted former foreign secretary Nirupama Menon Rao. “India weeps.”

“We never thought a second wave would hit us so hard,” Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, executive chairman of the healthcare firm Biocon, wrote in the Economic Times.

“Complacency led to unanticipated shortages of medicines, medical supplies and hospital beds.”

Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain said the city needed about 5,000 more intensive care beds.

Similar surges of infections, notably in South America, are threatening to overwhelm other health services.

China said it was willing to help India, although it was not immediately clear what this might consist of.

Only a tiny fraction of the Indian population has received a vaccination.

Authorities have announced vaccines will be available to anyone over 18 from May 1, but experts say there will not be enough for the 600 million people who will become eligible.

Health experts say India let its guard down during the winter, when daily cases were about 10,000 and seemed to be under control, and lifted restrictions to allow big gatherings.

MORE INFECTIOUS VARIANTS

New, more infectious variants of the virus, in particular a “double mutant” variant that originated in India, have helped accelerate the surge, but many also blame the politicians.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government ordered an extensive lockdown in the early stages of the pandemic but has been wary of the economic costs of more tough restrictions.

In recent weeks, the government has been criticized for holding packed political rallies for local elections and allowing a Hindu festival at which millions gathered.

“The second wave is a consequence of complacency and mixing and mass gatherings. You don’t need a variant to explain the second wave,” said Ramanan Laxminarayan of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy in New Delhi.

This week, Modi urged state governments to use lockdowns as a last resort. He asked people to stay indoors and said the government was working to expand oxygen and vaccine supplies.

He cancelled a visit to West Bengal scheduled for Friday.

A YouTube stream showed a hundred or more supporters attended Interior Minister Amit Shah’s election rally in Harirampur on Thursday.

Most donned saffron-colored face-masks — in sharp contrast to the thousands seen at similar gatherings this month — but were still seated close together.

“We are dying here, and they are holding rallies there,” one woman in the northern city of Lucknow said on television.

Madhukar Pai, professor of epidemiology at McGill University in Canada, said India was a cautionary tale for the world.

“If we declare success too soon, open up everything, give up on public health, and not vaccinate rapidly, the new variants can be devastating,” he tweeted.

(Additional reporting by Sanjeev Miglani, Krishna N. Das, Rupam Jain, Anuron Kumar Mitra, Alasdair Pal, Sumit Khanna, Shilpa Jamkhandikar; Writing by Robert Birsel, William Maclean; Editing by Kim Coghill and Kevin Liffey)

Oxygen leak kills 22 in Indian hospital as coronavirus infections mount

By Rajendra Jadhav and Neha Arora

SATARA, India, (Reuters) – At least 22 patients died on Wednesday in a hospital in western India after a disruption to their oxygen supply caused by a leaking tank, the health minister said, as a nationwide surge in coronavirus cases soaks up supplies of the gas.

The incident in the city of Nashik, one of India’s worst-hit areas, happened after the tank of oxygen leaked, said Rajesh Tope, the health minister of Maharashtra, the richest state, where the city is located.

“Patients who were on ventilators at the hospital in Nashik have died,” Tope said in televised remarks.

“The leakage was spotted at the tank supplying oxygen to these patients. The interrupted supply could be linked to the deaths of the patients in the hospital.”

The world’s second most populous nation reported 295,041 new infections on Wednesday – the biggest daily rise reported in any country – stretching its hospitals to breaking point, officials said.

Only the United States had a slightly higher one-day rise of 297,430 cases in January, though its tally has since fallen sharply. India’s 2,023 deaths were also its highest in the pandemic.

Adding to the sense of alarm, the Serum Institute of India, which manufactures the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, said it will be able to raise its monthly output to 100 million doses by July from 60-70 million now, later than its previous timeline of end-May.

The delay could slow India’s immunization drive, which the government has opened for all adults from next month to try to stem the deadly second wave.

Hospitals in Delhi, the capital, and elsewhere have been warning that their supplies of medical oxygen that are given to severely ill COVIOD-19 patients are running low as cases pour in.

Max Healthcare, the largest private sector healthcare provider in Delhi and its suburbs, said some of its hospitals had barely two hours’ worth of oxygen left.

“For the last few days the hospital has been facing serious difficulties in procuring adequate and regular supplies of oxygen,” it said in a statement.

“Presently, most of the hospitals in the network are working on dangerously low levels of oxygen supply, which can lead to a very serious adverse patient incident,” Max said.

Television showed images of people with empty oxygen cylinders crowding refilling facilities in the most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, as they scrambled to save stricken relatives in hospital.

The situation was so severe that some people had tried to loot an oxygen tanker, forcing authorities to beef up security, said the health minister of the northern state of Haryana.

“From now, I’ve ordered police protection for all tankers,” Anil Vij told Reuters partner ANI.

LOWERING THE GUARD

Health experts said India had let its guard down when the virus seemed to be under control during the winter, allowing big gatherings such as weddings and festivals.

India now faces a coronavirus “storm” overwhelming its health system, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a national address overnight, adding that authorities were working with states and private firms to deliver oxygen with “speed and sensitivity”.

Modi is himself facing criticism for addressing packed political rallies for local elections and allowing a religious festival to go ahead in which millions take a ritual bathe in the river Ganges, considered sacred by Hindus.

India has so far administered nearly 130 million doses of vaccine, the most in the world after the United States and China but still small relative to its population of 1.35 billion people.

Vaccine doses have already run short in many states though inoculations are currently restricted to frontline workers and those aged above 45.

(Additional reporting by Aditya Kalra, Devjyot Ghoshal and Krishna N.Das in New Delhi, Sachin Ravikumar in Bengaluru; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

India to allow COVID-19 vaccines for all adults as cases surge

By Neha Arora and Anuron Kumar Mitra

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India will let all citizens over 18 have COVID-19 vaccinations from May 1, the government said on Monday, as the health system creaked under the weight of record-high cases and the capital region of New Delhi ordered a lockdown.

Facing growing criticism over its handling of the second wave of the pandemic, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration said vaccine manufacturers would have to supply 50% of doses to the federal government and the rest to state governments and the open market at a pre-declared price.

Daily COVID-19 cases in India jumped a record 273,810 on Monday, and deaths rose a record 1,619 to 178,769. Hospitals have a shortage of beds, oxygen and key medicines, and infections have passed 15 million, the world’s second highest total after the United States.

The New Delhi region ordered a six-day lockdown starting Monday night after its chief minister said the health system was unable to take more patients in big numbers.

“If a lockdown isn’t implemented now, the situation will go beyond control,” Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal told a virtual media briefing on Monday.

Criticism of Modi’s administration has increased as he continued to address large state election rallies and let Hindu devotees congregate for a festival.

Kejriwal had said on Sunday that fewer than 100 critical care beds were available in the city of New Delhi, which has a population of more than 20 million people, and social media were flooded with complaints.

New Delhi joined 13 other Indian states that have decided to impose restrictions, curfews or lockdowns in their cities, including the richest state of Maharashtra and Modi’s home state of Gujarat, where the industrial city of Ahmedabad is also grappling with a shortage of beds.

Hong Kong said late on Sunday that the Asian financial hub will suspend flights from India, Pakistan and the Philippines from Tuesday for two weeks.

Britain has put India on a travel “red-list” and Prime Minister Boris Johnson cancelled a planned trip to India next week.

As of Monday, India had administered nearly 123.9 million vaccine doses – the most in the world after the United States and China, though it ranks much lower in per capita vaccination.

The current vaccination process is controlled by the federal government. Liberalizing it would augment vaccine production and availability, and attract new domestic and international vaccine manufacturers, the government said in its statement.

“It would also make pricing, procurement, eligibility and administration of vaccines open and flexible, allowing all stakeholders the flexibility to customise to local needs and dynamics,” it said.

(Reporting by Neha Arora in New Delhi, Anuron Kumar Mitra and Nivedita Bhattacharjee in Bengaluru; additional reporting by Sumit Khanna in Ahmedabad and Aftab Ahmed in New Delhi; Editing by Christian Schmollinger, Michael Perry, Nick Macfie and Timothy Heritage)

Oil steadies as dollar slumps but pandemic surge weighs

By Devika Krishna Kumar

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Oil prices were little changed on Monday, supported by a weaker U.S. dollar but pressured by concerns about the impact on demand from rising coronavirus cases in India and other countries.

Brent crude was down 4 cents, at $66.73 a barrel by 11:06 AM ET (1506 GMT), after rising 6% last week. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) U.S. oil was up 3 cents at $63.16 a barrel, having gained 6.4% last week.

The U.S. dollar traded at a six-week low versus major peers on Monday, with Treasury yields hovering near their weakest in five weeks.

With oil priced in dollars, a softer greenback could spur demand from holders of other currencies.

“If today’s broad-based weakness in the US dollar is sustained, the energy complex should be able to maintain the bulk of last week’s gains,” said Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch and Associates.

“The primary hazard to continued oil price strength is the possible pre-emergence of Covid-19 case counts on a broad scale”

India reported a record rise in infections, which lifted overall cases to just over 15 million, making the country the second-worst affected after the United States, which has reported more than 31 million infections.

Deaths from COVID-19 in India also rose by a record 1,619 to nearly 180,000.

The capital region of Delhi ordered a six-day lockdown, joining around 13 other states across India that have decided to impose restrictions, curfews or lockdowns in their cities.

“This new wave of measures, while so far likely to be less stringent than what we saw in March 2020, when gasoline and gasoil/diesel demand in the country fell by close to 60%, is nevertheless set to weigh on transportation fuel consumption,” consultancy JBC said.

Hong Kong will suspend flights from India, Pakistan and the Philippines from April 20 due to imported coronavirus infections, authorities said on Sunday.

Lending some support, Saudi Arabia’s crude oil exports fell in February to their lowest in eight months, the Joint Organizations Data Initiative (JODI) said on Monday, as the world’s biggest oil exporter voluntarily capped output to support oil prices.

JP Morgan now expects Brent prices to break the $70 mark by May, compared with September in its previous forecast, the bank said in a recent note. It still expects them to finish the year at a similar level of about $74.

(Additional reporting by Ahmad Ghaddar in London, Aaron Sheldrick in Tokyo; Editing by Jan Harvey, Kirsten Donovan, Alexander Smith and David Gregorio)

Non-stop cremations cast doubt on India’s counting of COVID dead

By Sumit Khanna, Alasdair Pal and Saurabh Sharma

AHMEDABAD, India (Reuters) – Gas and firewood furnaces at a crematorium in the western Indian state of Gujurat have been running so long without a break during the COVID-19 pandemic that metal parts have begun to melt.

“We are working around the clock at 100% capacity to cremate bodies on time,” Kamlesh Sailor, the president of the trust that runs the crematorium in the diamond-polishing city of Surat, told Reuters.

And with hospitals full and oxygen and medicines in short supply in an already creaky health system, several major cities are reporting far larger numbers of cremations and burials under coronavirus protocols than official COVID-19 death tolls, according to crematorium and cemetery workers, media and a review of government data.

India on Monday registered a record 273,810 new daily infections and 1,619 deaths. Its total number of cases now stands at more than 15 million, second only to the United States.

Reliable data is at the heart of any government response to the pandemic, without which planning for hospital vacancies, oxygen and medicine becomes difficult, experts say.

Government officials say the mismatch in death tallies may be caused by several factors, including over-caution.

A senior state health official said the increase in numbers of cremations had been due to bodies being cremated using COVID protocols “even if there is 0.1% probability of the person being positive”.

“In many cases, patients come to hospital in an extremely critical condition and die before they are tested, and there are instances where patients are brought dead to hospital, and we do not know if they are positive or not,” the official said.

‘VERY IRKSOME’

But Bhramar Mukherjee, a professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of Michigan, said many parts of India were in “data denial”.

“Everything is so muddy,” she said. “It feels like nobody understands the situation very clearly, and that’s very irksome.”

In Surat, Gujarat’s second largest city, Sailor’s Kurukshetra crematorium and a second crematorium known as Umra have cremated more than 100 bodies a day under COVID protocols over the last week, far in excess of the city’s official daily COVID death toll of around 25, according to interviews with workers.

Prashant Kabrawala, trustee of Narayan Trust, which manages a third city crematorium called Ashwinikumar, declined to provide the number of bodies received under COVID protocols, but said cremations there had tripled in recent weeks.

“I have been regularly going to the crematorium since 1987, and been involved in its day-to-day functioning since 2005, but I haven’t seen so many dead bodies coming for cremation in all these years,” even during an outbreak of the bubonic plague in 1994 and floods in 2006.

Government spokesmen in Gujurat did not respond to requests for comment.

India is not the only country to have its coronavirus statistics questioned. But the testimony of workers and a growing body of academic literature suggest deaths in India are being under reported compared to other countries.

Mukherjee’s research of India’s first wave concludes that there were 11 times more infections than were reported, in line with estimates from studies in other countries. There were also between two and five times as many deaths than were reported, far in excess of global averages.

WORKING DAY AND NIGHT

In Lucknow, capital of the populous northern state of Uttar Pradesh, data from the largest COVID-only crematorium, Baikunthdham, shows double the number of bodies arriving on six different days in April than government data on COVID deaths for the entire city.

The figures do not take into account a second COVID-only crematorium in the city, or burials in the Muslim community that makes up a quarter of the city’s population.

Crematorium head Azad, who goes by only one name, said the number of cremations under COVID protocols had risen five-fold in recent weeks.

“We are working day and night,” he said. “The incinerators are running full time but still many people have to wait with the bodies for the last rites.”

A spokesman for the Uttar Pradesh government did not respond to a request for comment.

Elsewhere, India Today reported two crematoriums in Bhopal, the capital of the central state of Madhya Pradesh, 187 bodies were cremated following COVID protocols in four days this month, while the official COVID death toll stood at five.

Last week Sandesh, a Gujarati newspaper, counted 63 bodies leaving a single COVID-only hospital for burial in the state’s largest city, Ahmedabad, on a day where government data showed 20 coronavirus deaths.

The Lancet medical journal noted last year that four Indian states making up 65% of COVID fatalities nationally each registered 100% of their coronavirus deaths.

But fewer than a quarter of deaths in India are medically certified, particularly in rural areas, meaning the true COVID death rate in many of India’s 24 other states may never be known.

“Most of the deaths are not registered so it’s impossible to do a validation calculation,” Mukherjee said.

(Reporting by Sumit Khanna in Ahmedabad, Saurabh Sharma in Lucknow and Alasdair Pal in New Delhi)

Delhi COVID-19 cemetery running low on space as deaths mount

By Alasdair Pal and Sunil Kataria

NEW DELHI (Reuters) -Beating the earth with his fists, a young man wails as the body of his father, who died after contracting COVID-19, is taken from an ambulance and lowered into a hastily-dug grave in India’s capital New Delhi.

“You told me not to go outside but I didn’t listen,” he cries. “It’s my fault,” he shouts over and over. “I’m sorry.”

The city’s main Muslim graveyard for victims of COVID-19 is running out of space, according to authorities, as cases in Delhi and across the country run out of control following the relaxation of almost all curbs on movement last year.

India, a country of almost 1.4 billion people, has reported more than 200,000 new daily cases for the last two days, the highest in the world, with Delhi overtaking Mumbai as the country’s worst-hit city.

On Friday, a steady stream of ambulances arrived at the Jadid Qabristan cemetery on the outskirts of the ancient walled city, where a vast patch of waste ground was turned into a COVID-19 burial ground last year.

Stretching as far as the eye can see, the graves now run up to the boundary wall, with little space for more.

Head gravedigger Mohammad Shameem said he now has to turn bodies away, with space and staff at a premium.

“Yesterday there were 19 bodies, but we can only handle 15,” he said.

Families, many wearing little or no protective equipment, lift relatives into rough plywood coffins or carry the dead wrapped in a simple white sheet.

The family of COVID-19-positive Pappu Ali, 43, visited several private hospitals in the capital searching for a bed for him. He died after finally being admitted to a government hospital.

“There were not enough doctors,” his uncle, Mehboob, said, after a yellow excavator filled the grave. “We couldn’t even find water.”

(Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Two to a bed in Delhi hospital as India’s COVID crisis spirals

By Danish Siddiqui and Alasdair Pal

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Gasping for air, two men wearing oxygen masks share a bed in a government hospital in India’s capital New Delhi, victims of the country’s growing COVID-19 crisis.

From reporting under 10,000 new daily cases earlier this year, daily infections crossed 200,000 on Thursday, according to official data, the highest anywhere in the world.

At Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital (LNJP), one of India’s largest COVID-only facilities with more than 1,500 beds, a stream of ambulances ferried patients to the overflowing casualty ward on Thursday.

Some also arrived in buses and three-wheeled autorickshaws.

The youngest patient was a new-born baby.

“We are definitely over-burdened. We are already working at full capacity,” said the hospital’s medical director, Suresh Kumar.

From an initial 54 beds, the hospital now has over 300 for COVID-19 patients in critical condition. Even that is not enough.

Unrelated patients share beds, while bodies of the recently deceased lie outside the ward before being taken to the mortuary.

“Today we have 158 admissions in Lok Nayak alone,” Kumar said. Almost all were severe cases.

After imposing one of the world’s strictest lockdowns for nearly three months last year, India’s government relaxed almost all curbs by the beginning of 2021, although many regions have now introduced localized restrictions.

LNJP’s Kumar said fast-spreading new variants that evade testing were adding to the burden, as was human behavior as the country reopened.

“People are not following the COVID guidelines,” he said. “They are just careless.”

Outside the hospital’s mortuary, weeping relatives gathered in the hot sun to wait for the bodies of loved ones to be released.

India, big vaccine exporter, now vaccine exporter as COVID-19 cases soar

By Alasdair Pal and Krishna N. Das

NEW DELHI (Reuters) -India on Tuesday said it will fast-track emergency approvals for COVID-19 vaccines authorized by Western countries and Japan, paving the way for possible imports of Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Moderna shots.

The move, which will exempt companies from carrying out local safety trials for their vaccines, follows the world’s biggest surge in cases in the country this month.

Since April 2, India has reported the highest daily tallies of infections. It reported 161,736 cases on Tuesday, taking the total to 13.7 million, while deaths rose by 879 to 171,058.

On Tuesday, India’s richest state Maharashtra, which accounts for about a quarter of the country’s cases, said it would impose stringent restrictions from Wednesday to try to contain the spread.

India has the biggest global vaccine manufacturing capacity and had exported tens of millions of doses before its own demand skyrocketed and led to a shortage in some states.

Dozens of poor countries have relied on Indian exports to run their inoculation drives.

The health ministry said vaccines authorized by the World Health Organization or authorities in the United States, Europe, Britain and Japan could be granted emergency use approval in India.

“If any of these regulators have approved a vaccine, the vaccine is now ready to be brought into the country for use, manufacture and fill-and-finish,” Vinod Kumar Paul, a senior government health official, told a news conference.

“We hope and we invite the vaccine makers such as Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and others … to be ready to come to India as early as possible.”

Pfizer said it would work towards bringing its vaccine to India after withdrawing its application in February.

U.S. federal health agencies on Tuesday recommended pausing use of the J&J shot after six women under age 50 developed rare blood clots after receiving it.

India has administered more than 108 million vaccine doses, sold more than 54.6 million vaccine doses abroad and gifted more than 10 million to partner countries.

It is currently using the AstraZeneca shot and a homegrown vaccine for its own immunization drive, and this week approved Russia’s Sputnik V shot for emergency use.

RALLIES, RELIGIOUS GATHERINGS

The jump in India’s infections, for which Health Minister Harsh Vardhan acknowledged widespread failure to heed curbs on movement and social interaction, has prompted calls for the government to cancel huge public events.

Still, hundreds of thousands of devout Hindus are set to bathe in the Ganges river on Wednesday, the third key day of the weeks-long Kumbh Mela – or pitcher festival.

Nearly a million bathed in the Ganges on Monday in the belief that its waters would wash away their sins. More than 100 tested positive for COVID-19 in random testing of around 18,000 attendees, media said.

Similar concerns of a spike in cases were sparked by mass election rallies by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party and opposition groups during polls in four states and one federally run region.

At one rally in the eastern state of West Bengal, a key political prize, Home Minister Amit Shah posted Twitter pictures of meetings with crowds of supporters while unmasked.

DEADLY SPREAD

The second wave of infections, which began in India’s major cities, is increasingly spreading into the hinterland, where healthcare facilities are often rudimentary.

In Raipur, the capital of Chhattisgarh state known for its large tribal population, the main government hospital’s morgue was struggling to keep up, said joint director Dr Vineet Jain.

“All oxygenated and ICU beds are full in our set-up,” he told Reuters.

“Around 50 dead bodies are laying, we have a shortage of space. Some private hospitals do not have space to keep the dead bodies so they also send the bodies to us.”

India is currently reporting around double the daily cases of the United States and Brazil, the two other worst affected countries, though its daily death toll is lower.

India’s total infections rank after only the United States, having overtaken Brazil on Monday.

(Reporting by Krishna N. Das and Alasdair Pal in New Delhi and Jatindra Dash in Bhubaneswar; Editing by Nick Macfie, Ana Nicolaci da Costa and John Stonestreet)

India approves Russia’s Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine

By Nigam Prusty and Krishna N. Das

NEW DELHI/MOSCOW (Reuters) -India has approved the use of Russian Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine, the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) said on Monday, confirming earlier reports of its imminent endorsement.

India overtook Brazil to become the nation with the second highest number of infections worldwide after the United States, as it battles a second wave, having given about 105 million doses among a population of 1.4 billion.

The RDIF, which is responsible for marketing the vaccine abroad, said the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) had approved the use of Sputnik V.

“India, the world’s 2nd most populous nation, became the 60th country to register #SputnikV after positive results of local Phase 3 clinical study. Sputnik V is now authorized in 60 countries with population of over 3 bln people,” a post on the Sputnik V official Twitter account said.

Earlier on Monday, two people familiar with the matter said the panel of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO) had recommended the authorization.

The RDIF has signed deals to produce more than 750 million doses of Sputnik V in India with six domestic firms.

India has so far used two vaccines, one developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, and the other by domestic firm Bharat Biotech.

Sputnik V, developed by Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute, has proved 91.6% effective against COVID-19 and has been approved for use in more than 50 countries.

The Indian drugs regulator did not respond to a request for comment on the expert panel’s approval of the Russian vaccine.

Indian pharmaceutical firm Dr. Reddy’s, which is marketing the vaccine in India, said it was awaiting formal word from the authorities.

“Dr. Reddy’s and RDIF are working diligently with the Indian regulatory authorities to obtain the approval for Sputnik V. We are fully committed to playing our part in India’s fight against COVID,” the company said.

Shares of Dr. Reddy’s ended up 5% after the Economic Times newspaper first reported the news.

The firm has helped run a small domestic trial to test the vaccine’s safety and ability to generate an immune response.

(Additional reporting by Rama Venkat and Shivani Singh in Bengaluru, Polina Ivanova and Vladimir Soldatkin in Moscow; Writing by Sachin Ravikumar; Editing by William Maclean and Angus MacSwan)