Cyclone Tauktae hit India on Monday, with winds of up to 185 km / h, hampering efforts to tackle the devastating Covid-19 epidemic.
It is the biggest storm to hit western India in thirty years, when the country is already struggling to fight the Covid-19 epidemic.
At least twenty people died over the weekend due to torrential rains and strong winds.
In the state of Gujarat, more than 100,000 people were evacuated in 17 districts overnight from Sunday to Monday and all Covid-19 patients treated in hospitals located five kilometers from the coast were also displaced.
The authorities in this region are working to avoid any power cuts in the some 400 hospitals and 41 oxygen plants in the 12 coastal districts where the cyclone is expected to strike the hardest.
"To make sure that hospitals treating Covid do not face power cuts, 1,383 generators have been installed," said a senior local official, Pankaj Kumar.
"This cyclone is a terrible double sorrow for millions of people in India", reacted in a statement Udaya Regmi, of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
In May 2020, also during the Covid-19 pandemic, more than 110 people died during the passage of the powerful Cyclone Amphan which devastated eastern India and Bangladesh.