Read the video transcript here
India is desperately fighting a second corona wave and is losing more lives than ever before.
For days, the country has been recording new highs in new infections, the mutant B.1.617 is on the advance.
The hospitals are overburdened, oxygen is scarce.
Original sound:
“We've been to two hospitals and one near Akshardham Stadium. They didn't even let us in, they had barricaded everything. "
The capital New Delhi has been particularly hard hit.
People die here because there is no oxygen for ventilation.
Doctors cannot always take care of the many patients.
Relatives try to save them themselves.
In desperation, people move from hospital to hospital - like Hari Murari with his younger brother.
Hari Murari:
“I've been to six hospitals since this morning, now I've ended up here. They refused treatment everywhere. They have no beds and no oxygen. At the Rajiv Gandhi Hospital, they send you back before you get out on the grounds that they have no beds and no oxygen. Only here could we get an oxygen bottle, I literally snatched it from me .. «
India, with its almost 1.4 billion inhabitants, currently has more than 300,000 new infections every day - and thus almost every second corona case worldwide.
In April, the number of corona deaths rose from just under 450 to over 2,800 a day. The number of unreported cases is likely to be much higher.
A strict curfew went into effect in Delhi on April 19.
But the already weak health system has now collapsed.
Even seriously ill Covid patients cannot always be treated - like Aarti Verma's mother-in-law.
Aarti Verma:
“I've been walking through Delhi for four days, my mother-in-law is seriously ill and I can't get a hospital bed. What is the government doing? She claims she has set up 500 or 1000 beds. The government should be held responsible! "
»If they start treating everyone free of charge, Corona will long be over. And the private hospitals use the opportunity to do nefarious business. "
On April 13th, Delhi's head of government, Arvind Kejriwal, affirmed that there was "no shortage of oxygen."
Five days later he tweeted: "There is an oxygen emergency in Delhi."
But the plight of many sick people and their relatives does not end with death.
Sudhanshu Bose, Family member: “Our family member died yesterday at 4:00 am in the hospital. Since then we have waited, until today, until 2 p.m., only then was the body handed over to us. People are at the mercy of the hospital, administration and government. And there is no help, no one who can give information about what to do. "
The city is completely overwhelmed with the many dead.
The deceased are cremated en masse in makeshift crematoria.
Sameer Chaudhary, worker in the crematorium:
“The situation is very dire, we get nearly seventy bodies every day. Last year the rush was much lower. "
Countries like the USA, Great Britain and Germany want to help now: Oxygen tanks, ventilators and protective equipment should land in India as soon as possible.
The situation on the streets of New Delhi shows that the world is divided into two parts.
To the countries that can afford to fight the mutants and those that lack too much for it.
