India's official coronavirus case count exceeded 20 million on Tuesday, with a top expert warning that the coming weeks will be "horrible" for the country of nearly 1.4 billion people.
In India, Covid-19 infections and deaths are increasing at an alarming rate, with cases nearly doubling in the last three months and deaths officially surpassing 220,000. The actual estimates are thought to be much higher, with the undercount reflecting the problems in the healthcare system.
Dr. Ashish Jha, Dean of Brown University's School of Public Health in the U.S., expressed concern that Indian officials he has spoken with believe things will improve in the coming days.
"I've been ... trying to say to them, 'If everything goes very well, things will be horrible for the next several weeks. And it may be much longer,'" he said.
Jha believes that the focus should be on "classic" public health interventions such as targeted shutdowns, increased testing, compulsory mask use, and avoiding large crowds.
Meanwhile, Rajesh Bhushan, India's top health official, declined to speculate last month on why authorities were not better prepared. However, it is clear that people are dying due to a lack of bottled oxygen and hospital beds, or because they were unable to obtain a COVID-19 test.
The New Delhi High Court has already declared that it would begin prosecuting government officials if hospital oxygen supplies are not distributed.
The official daily average of newly reported cases in India has risen from more than 65,000 on Apr. 1 to about 370,000, and the official daily death toll has risen from more than 300 to more than 3,000.
The health ministry confirmed 357,229 new cases in the previous 24 hours and 3,449 deaths from COVID-19 on Tuesday.
India vaccinates approximately 2.1 million people a day or approximately 0.15% of its population.
International aid has poured in.
The U.S. has sent essential oxygen equipment, therapeutics, and raw materials for vaccine production. British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said on Sunday that his country will send more ventilators "very shortly."
