Reuters: “India reported the world’s highest daily tally of coronavirus infections for a second day on Friday, surpassing 330,000 new cases, as it struggles with a health system overwhelmed by patients and plagued by accidents. Deaths in the past 24 hours also jumped to a record 2,263, the health ministry said, while officials across northern and western India, including the capital, New Delhi, warned most hospitals were full and running out of oxygen.”

“The surge in cases came as a fire in a hospital in a suburb of Mumbai treating COVID-19 patients killed 13 people, the latest accident to hit a facility crowded with virus sufferers. On Wednesday, 22 patients died at a public hospital in the western state of Maharashtra when their oxygen supply ran out due to a leaking tank, after at least nine more died in a hospital fire last month in the state’s capital of Mumbai. ‘It is grim. It is grave … there is an extreme shortage of ICU beds,’ T.S. Singh Deo, health minister of the eastern state of Chhattisgarh, told Reuters. ‘We’ll need to be very careful in the rural areas. If it spreads there, then it will be out of control.’ Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose government has been criticised for relaxing virus curbs too soon, met chief ministers of the worst-affected states, including the capital Delhi, Maharashtra and Modi’s home state of Gujarat, to discuss the crisis.”