India hits new daily record as COVID-19 death toll surpasses 200,000

On Wednesday, India recorded 3,293 new deaths in its latest single-day count, bringing its current COVID-19 death toll to 201,187.

India is the fourth country to pass 200,000 deaths — behind the US, Brazil and Mexico.

The country has so far recorded about 18 million infections, since confirming its first case in January 2020.

Over the past weeks, the South Asian country has seen a major spike in its infection rate as the COVID-19 cases and death figures keep breaking previous records.

While Indian hospitals are turning back dying patients, having run out of medical oxygen, drugs and bedspaces, crematoriums are also overloaded with bodies, requiring makeshift funeral pyres to be created on spare patches of land.

Russia, New Zealand and France have promised to send emergency medical equipment.

In a related development, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned that a variant of COVID-19, feared to be contributing to a surge in coronavirus cases in India, has been found in 17 countries.

Meanwhile, in a statement on Wednesday, Poonam Khetrapal Singh, regional director, WHO south-east asia region, said there is a need to speed up efforts to contain the situation in India.

“The current rapid surge of COVID-19 cases has put immense pressure on the health systems, already overburdened since the start of the pandemic. We need to act with speed, expand hospital capacities and equip them with medical supplies, most needed to save lives,” she said.