Covid: What went wrong in India?

The Inquiry

BBC

News Commentary, News

4.6 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 29 April 2021

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Earlier this year, India’s ruling party was declaring victory in the fight against Covid-19. Some two months on, India set a global record for the highest number of cases recorded in a single country.

Kavita Puri asks what went wrong.

Image: A queue near a vaccination centre in Mumbai, 26 April 2021 (Credit: Divyakant Solanki/EPA)

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the inquiry on the BBC World Service with me, Kavita Puri,
0:04.4	each week one question, four expert witnesses, and the answer.
0:16.4	A 65-year-old man is on Twitter.
0:19.1	He has COVID-19 symptoms and is awaiting his test results.
0:23.2	He wants a hospital bed.
0:26.4	His oxygen levels are dropping.
0:30.7	He tweets, it's now at 52.
0:33.8	Normal levels are around 95.
0:37.2	The hospitals and doctors are not picking up the phone, he writes.
0:42.4	The next day, he says his oxygen levels are at 31,
0:46.5	perilously low.
0:48.3	When will someone help me, he writes?
0:51.6	And suddenly, the tweets stop.
0:55.8	The man's name was Vineshra Vistava, a journalist from Lucknow,
0:59.7	India. His family, who'd been trying to get to
1:02.8	my hospital bed and oxygen, said he died that day.
1:08.5	Social media in India is full of similar pleas.
1:12.3	The situation in hospitals across the country is dire,
1:16.0	as medical supplies are running out.
1:18.5	There's not even space for cremations, as bodies mount up.
1:23.2	This past week, India set a global record.
1:26.1	It had the highest number of daily COVID cases recorded
	...

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