India sees cases officially drop below 300,000 a day but now country threatened by killer cyclone

India has seen the number of Covid-19 cases drop below 300,000 a day for the first time in three weeks – but as the country grapples with a second wave, it must also contend with a killer cyclone.

Cyclone Tauktae bore down on India on Monday, disrupting the nation’s urgent response to its devastating Covid-19 outbreak. 

At least eight people died over the weekend as Tauktae, the biggest cyclone to hit western India in 20 years according to local media, triggered gale-force winds, torrential rains and high tidal waves along the Karnataka, Kerala and Goa coasts. 

It comes as India’s health ministry on Monday reported 281,386 coronavirus cases, dropping below 300,000 for the first time since April 21.  

But daily deaths remained about 4,000 and experts warned that the count was unreliable due to a lack of testing in rural areas, where the virus is spreading fast. 

India’s health ministry on Monday reported 281,386 coronavirus cases, dropping below 300,000 for the first time since April 21

As the country grapples with a second wave, it must also contend with a killer cyclone. Pictured: Police and rescue personnel evacuate local residents from a flooded house in Kochi on May 14 after heavy rains hit

As the country grapples with a second wave, it must also contend with a killer cyclone. Pictured: Police and rescue personnel evacuate local residents from a flooded house in Kochi on May 14 after heavy rains hit

Torrential rain, intense wind batter India's financial capital of Mumbai ahead of cyclone landfall on Monday

Torrential rain, intense wind batter India’s financial capital of Mumbai ahead of cyclone landfall on Monday

Torrential rain and severe hits Mumbai as cyclone Tauktae sweeps through the city

Torrential rain and severe hits Mumbai as cyclone Tauktae sweeps through the city 

The ‘Extremely Severe Cyclonic Storm’ is due to make landfall on Monday between 8-11 pm (1430-1730 GMT) with winds of 155-165 kilometres per hour (95-100 miles per hour) gusting up to 185 kmph, the Indian Meteorological Department said.

It warned of storm surges of up to ten feet high (three metres) high in some of Gujarat’s coastal districts. 

The vast swirling system visible from space threatens to exacerbate India’s dire problems dealing with a huge surge in coronavirus cases that is killing at least 4,000 people every day and pushing hospitals to breaking point.     

In waterlogged Mumbai, where authorities on Monday closed the airport for several hours and urged people to stay indoors, authorities on Sunday shifted 580 Covid patients ‘to safer locations’ from three field hospitals.

In Gujarat, where on Sunday and overnight more than 100,000 people from 17 districts were evacuated, all Covid-19 patients in hospitals with five kilometres of the coast were also moved.

Authorities there were scrambling to ensure there would be no power cuts in the nearly 400 designated hospitals and 41 oxygen plants in 12 coastal districts where the cyclone was expected to hit hardest.

‘To ensure that Covid hospitals are not faced with power outages, 1,383 power back-ups have been installed,’ senior local official Pankaj Kumar said.

‘Thirty-five ‘green corridors’ have also been made for supply of oxygen to Covid hospitals,’ he said.

Police and rescue personnel evacuate a local resident through a flooded street in a coastal area after heavy rains under the influence of cyclone 'Tauktae' in Kochi on May 14

Police and rescue personnel evacuate a local resident through a flooded street in a coastal area after heavy rains under the influence of cyclone ‘Tauktae’ in Kochi on May 14

Auto rickshaws wade through a flooded street during heavy raised caused by Cyclone Tauktae in Mumbai on Monday

Auto rickshaws wade through a flooded street during heavy raised caused by Cyclone Tauktae in Mumbai on Monday

Police personnel clear fallen trees from a road following cyclone Tauktae hit Panjim in Goa on May 16

Police personnel clear fallen trees from a road following cyclone Tauktae hit Panjim in Goa on May 16

Indian government reassures citizens 5G does not cause Covid 

The Indian government has been forced to reassure its citizens that 5G has not caused the second wave of coronavirus following a spate of conspiracy theories circulating on social media. 

Officials pointed out that there are no 5G networks in India as the country only approved 5G trials last week and they won’t start for months.

The government described the conspiracy theories as ‘baseless and false’ and urged the public not to be ‘misguided’ by the rumours.  

India’s Department of Telecommunication said in a statement: ‘Several misleading messages are being circulated on various social media platforms claiming that the second wave of coronavirus has been caused by the testing of the 5G mobile towers.

‘These messages are false and absolutely not correct… the general public is hereby informed that there is no link between 5G technology and the spread of Covid-19 and they are urged not to be misguided by the false information and rumours spread in this matter.’ 

A prominent message circulating on social media states that the radiation from cell phone towers ‘mixes with the air and makes it poisonous and that’s why people are facing difficulty in breathing and are dying’, reports Coda Story

Virus safety protocols such as wearing masks, social distancing and the use of sanitisers would be observed in the shelters for evacuees, officials added.

The state, which officially has seen 9,000 virus deaths – likely a gross underestimate, as elsewhere, experts say – also suspended vaccinations for two days. Mumbai did the same for one day.

Thousands of disaster response personnel had been deployed, while units from the coast guard, navy, army and air force had been placed on standby, Home Minister Amit Shah said in a statement.

‘This will be the most severe cyclone to hit Gujarat in at least 20 years. This can be compared with the 1998 cyclone that hit Kandla and inflicted heavy damage,’ state revenue secretary Pankaj Kumar said.

Four people died on Saturday as rain and winds battered Karnataka state with several towns and villages flooded, authorities said.

Two people died in the resort state of Goa – which has been hit particularly hard by the pandemic in recent weeks – hitting power supplies and uprooting trees.

Two others were reported dead and 23 fishermen were feared missing in Kerala, local media said.

Last May, more than 110 people died after ‘super cyclone’ Amphan ravaged eastern India and Bangladesh, flattening villages, destroying farms and leaving millions without electricity. 

The 1998 cyclone that ravaged Gujarat killed at least 4,000 people and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage, media reported at the time. 

The vast nation of 1.3 billion people reported on Monday 4,100 deaths and 280,000 fresh Covid-19 cases in the past 24 hours, taking the total close to 25 million – a doubling since April 1. 

For months now, nowhere in the world has been hit harder than India by the pandemic, as a new strain of the virus first found there fuelled a surge in infections that has risen to more than 400,000 daily.

Even with a downturn over the past few days, experts said there was no certainty that infections had peaked, with alarm growing both at home and abroad over the new more contagious B.1.617 variant taking hold.

It comes as India registered another 4,077 deaths on Sunday, taking the total fatalities to a devastating 270,294

It comes as India registered another 4,077 deaths on Sunday, taking the total fatalities to a devastating 270,294

Indian covid sufferers are now contracting deadly ‘black fungus’ infection with spike causing a shortage of the drugs to treat it 

A growing number of current and recovered Covid-19 patients in India are contracting a deadly and rare fungal infection, doctors said on Monday.  

Mucormycosis, dubbed ‘black fungus’ by medics, is usually most aggressive in patients whose immune systems are weakened by other infections. 

‘The cases of mucormycosis infection in Covid-19 patients post-recovery is nearly four to five times than those reported before the pandemic,’ Ahmedabad-based infectious diseases specialist Atul Patel, a member of the state’s Covid-19 taskforce, told AFP.   

In the western state of Maharashtra, home to India’s financial hub Mumbai, up to 300 cases have been detected, said Khusrav Bajan, a consultant at Mumbai’s P.D. Hinduja National Hospital and a member of the state’s Covid-19 taskforce.

Some 300 cases have been reported so far in four cities in Gujarat, including its largest Ahmedabad, according to data from state-run hospitals.

The western state ordered government hospitals to set up separate treatment wards for patients infected with ‘black fungus’ amid the rise in cases.

‘Mucormycosis – if uncared for – may turn fatal,’ the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR), the scientific agency leading the government’s response, said in a treatment chart released on Twitter.

Covid-19 sufferers more susceptible to contracting the fungal infection include those with uncontrolled diabetes, those who used steroids during their virus treatment, and those who had prolonged stays in hospital ICUs, the ICMR added.

Treatment involves surgically removing all dead and infected tissue and administering a course of anti-fungal therapy.

But Yogesh Dabholkar, an ear, nose and throat specialist at Mumbai’s DY Patil Hospital, told AFP that the drugs used to treat those infected with the fungus were expensive.

One of the treatment drugs was also running short in government hospitals due to the sudden spike, he added.

‘The mortality rate is very high… Even the few that recover, only recover with extensive and aggressive surgery,’ Bajan said.

‘This is a fast-moving infection. It can grow within two weeks… It’s a Catch-22, coming out of a virus and getting into a fungal infection. It’s really bad.’

Reporting by AFP 

‘There are still many parts of the country which have not yet experienced the peak, they are still going up,’ World Health Organization Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan was quoted as saying in the Hindu newspaper.

Swaminathan pointed to the worryingly high national positivity rate, at about 20 per cent of tests conducted, as a sign that there could be worse to come.

‘Testing is still inadequate in a large number of states. And when you see high test positivity rates, clearly we are not testing enough. And so the absolute numbers actually don’t mean anything when they are taken just by themselves; they have to be taken in the context of how much testing is done, and test positivity rate.’

Having begun to decline last week, and new infections over the past 24 hours were put at 281,386 by the health ministry on Monday, dropping below 300,000 for the first time since April 21. The daily death count stood at 4,106.

At the current rate India’s total caseload since the epidemic struck a year ago should pass the 25 million mark in the next couple of days. Total deaths were put at 274,390.

Hospitals have had to turn patients away while mortuaries and crematoriums have been unable to cope with bodies piling up. Photographs and television images of funeral pyres burning in parking lots and corpses washing up on the banks of the Ganges river have fuelled impatience with the government’s handling of the crisis.

It is widely accepted that the official figures grossly underestimate the real impact of the epidemic, with some experts saying actual infections and deaths could be five to 10 times higher. 

Whereas the first wave of the epidemic in India, which peaked in September, was largely concentrated in urban areas, where testing was introduced faster, the second wave that erupted in February is rampaging through rural towns and villages, where about two-thirds of the country’s 1.35 billion people live, and testing in those places is sorely lacking.

‘This drop in confirmed COVID cases in India is an illusion,’ S. Vincent Rajkumar, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in the United States, said on Twitter.

‘First, due to limited testing, the total number of cases is a huge underestimate. Second, confirmed cases can only occur where you can confirm: the urban areas. Rural areas are not getting counted.’

But lockdowns in parts of the country such as Mumbai are offering a glimmer of hope for India.   

In the last week, the number of new cases plunged by nearly 70 per cent in the nation’s financial capital, home to 22 million people.

After a peak of 11,000 daily cases, the city is recording fewer than 2,000 a day. Even the capital of New Delhi is seeing signs of improvement.

But experts say the crisis is far from over in the country of nearly 1.4 billion people, with hospitals still overwhelmed and officials struggling with short supplies of oxygen and beds.

A well-enforced lockdown and vigilant authorities are being credited for Mumbai’s burgeoning success.

Even the capital of New Delhi is seeing whispers of improvement as infections slacken after weeks of tragedy and desperation playing out in overcrowded hospitals and crematoriums and on the streets.  

It is still too early to say things are improving, with Mumbai and New Delhi representing only a sliver of the overall situation.    

While lockdowns have helped limit cases in parts of the country that had been hit by an initial surge of infections in February and April, such as Maharashtra and Delhi, rural areas and some states are dealing with fresh surges.

Combating the spread in the countryside, where health infrastructure is scarce and where most Indians live, will be the biggest challenge.

‘The transmission will be slower and lower, but it can still exact a big toll,’ said K Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India. 

The government issued detailed guidelines on Sunday for monitoring COVID-19 cases with the health ministry asking villages to look out for people with flu-like illness and get them tested for COVID-19.

Villagers in northern India are also being urged by police officers not to bury their dead in rivers after scores of bodies washed up on the shore of the Ganges.

Dozens of bodies were also discovered in shallow sand graves, prompting police to investigate. 

Policemen stand next to the bodies buried in shallow graves on the banks of Ganges river in Prayahraj, India on Saturday

Policemen stand next to the bodies buried in shallow graves on the banks of Ganges river in Prayahraj, India on Saturday

On Friday, rains exposed the cloth coverings of bodies buried in shallow graves in the sand of the riverbank in Prayagraj, a city in Uttar Pradesh state. Pictured: Several bodies are seen buried in shallow graves on Saturday in Prayagraj

On Friday, rains exposed the cloth coverings of bodies buried in shallow graves in the sand of the riverbank in Prayagraj, a city in Uttar Pradesh state. Pictured: Several bodies are seen buried in shallow graves on Saturday in Prayagraj

In jeeps and boats, the police used portable loudspeakers to ask villagers not to dispose of the bodies in rivers. ‘We are here to help you perform the last rights,’ they said. 

On Friday, rains exposed the cloth coverings of bodies buried in shallow graves in the sand of the riverbank in Prayagraj, a city in Uttar Pradesh state. 

Navneet Sehgal, a state government spokesman, on Sunday denied local media reports that more than 1,000 corpses of COVID-19 victims had been recovered from rivers in the past two weeks. ‘I bet these bodies have nothing to do with COVID-19,’ he said.

Earlier this week, authorities installed a net across the Ganges to catch the corpses of Covid victims after dozens washed up on the river’s banks. 

Four relatives carry a dead body of a Covid-victim past shallow graves covered with cloths on the banks of the Ganges River in Shringverpur village on Saturday

Four relatives carry a dead body of a Covid-victim past shallow graves covered with cloths on the banks of the Ganges River in Shringverpur village on Saturday

Mr Sehgal said some villagers did not cremate their dead, as is customary, due to a Hindu tradition during some periods of religious significance and disposed of them in rivers or digging graves on riverbanks. 

K.P. Singh, a senior police officer, said authorities had earmarked a cremation ground for those who died of COVID-19 on the Prayagraj riverbank and the police were no longer allowing any burials on the riverfront.

Sehgal state authorities have found ‘a small number’ of bodies on the riverbanks, he said, but didn’t give a figure.

Ramesh Kumar Singh, a member of Bondhu Mahal Samiti, a philanthropic organization that helps cremate bodies, said the number of deaths is very high in rural areas.

He said relatives have been disposing of the bodies in the river because they could not afford wood for traditional Hindu cremations or the cost of performing the last rites. The cremation cost has tripled up to 15,000 rupees (£145). 

Dozens more bodies of Covid victims in Inida washed up on the banks of the Ganges on Tuesday, as ambulance drivers were spotted dumping corpses into the water

Health authorities last week retrieved 71 bodies that washed up on the Ganges River bank in neighboring Bihar state.

It prompted authorities to install a net across the Ganges to catch the corpses of other Covid victims. 

The discovery of the bodies in Bihar state on Tuesday last week stoked fears that the virus was raging unseen in India’s vast rural hinterland where two-thirds of its people live.    

The infected bodies surfaced in the river along the border of the northern states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which the Ganges runs through.  

Bihar’s water resources minister Sanjay Kumar said on Twitter on Wednesday that a ‘net has been placed’ in the river on the state border with Uttar Pradesh and patrolling increased.

He said the impoverished state’s government was ‘pained at both the tragedy as well as harm to the river Ganges’. 

The infected bodies (pictured) surfaced in the river along the border of the northern states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, where the Ganges run through

The infected bodies (pictured) surfaced in the river along the border of the northern states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, where the Ganges run through

Health workers in India were filmed reportedly dumping bodies in the Ganges

Health workers in India were filmed reportedly dumping bodies in the Ganges

Health workers in India were filmed reportedly dumping bodies in the Ganges (pictured)

Authorities performed post mortems but said they could not confirm the cause of death due to decomposition.

Kumar added that postmortems confirmed that the corpses had been dead for four to five days.

Press reports said as many as 25 bodies had also been recovered in the Gahmar district of Uttar Pradesh state.

The Hindu daily quoted a local police official there as saying there were long queues at cremation grounds in the northern state.

‘It is possible that in hurry some disposed of the bodies in the river like this,’ Hitendra Krishna was quoted as saying.

A dozen corpses were also found last week buried in sand at two locations on the riverbank in Unnao district, 40 kilometres southwest of Lucknow, the Uttar Pradesh state capital. 

District Magistrate Ravindra Kumar said an investigation is underway to identify the cause of death.

A video reportedly showing bodies thrown into the water by ambulance drivers was shared widely on social media, and was picked up by local news outlets.

Another showed the bodies washed up on the shores of the Ganges, with wild dogs walking in the shallows and sniffing at the victims.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has come under fire for his messaging to the public, a decision to leave key decisions on lockdowns to states, and the slow rollout of an immunisation campaign in the world’s biggest vaccine producer.

India has fully vaccinated just over 40.4 million people, or 2.9 per cent of its population.

A top virologist told Reuters on Sunday that he had resigned from a forum of scientific advisers set up by the government to detect variants of the coronavirus.

Shahid Jameel, chair of the scientific advisory group of the forum known as INSACOG, declined to say why he had resigned but said he was concerned that authorities were not paying enough attention to the evidence as they set policy.