April 28, 2021
The harrowing image of a woman desperately giving cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) to her dying husband in an auto rickshaw has gone viral on social media, and broken millions of hearts around the globe.
India has been reporting more than 300,000 coronavirus infections over the past few days, overburdening its health systems. Several hospitals across the country have run out of oxygen, causing many patients to die.
As per Indian news outlets, the picture is of a woman named Renu Singhal, a resident of Uttar Pradesh's Agra, who can be seen in a rickshaw trying to revive her husband, Ravi Singhal.
She can be seen in another picture, sprinkling water on her husband's face, panic and grief written all over her face.
Singhal was a coronavirus patient and is on the verge of collapse when his wife tries to give him CPR. Her attempts came to nought as Singhal was pronounced dead by the SN Medical College on Tuesday.
As per the Times of India, Renu took her husband to four different hospitals for treatment before arriving at the SN Medical College where he too, was denied entry.
The situation in Agra is horrifying for coronavirus patients as according to the media, hospitals have started discharging coronavirus patients due to the non-availability of oxygen.
Life-saving medicines are also scarce in the market while caretakers of COVID-19 patients can be seen searching for oxygen cylinders in markets across the country.
The Agra district reported 494 fresh cases on Tuesday.
Today was no different for the country, as far as death and devastation from the coronavirus is concerned, as India's COVID-19 death toll surged past 200,000 on Wednesday.
Shortages of oxygen, medical supplies and hospital staff compounded a record number of new cases of the virus.
In the past 24 hours, 360,960 new cases were recorded, the largest single-day total in the world, taking India's total to nearly 18 million. A further 3,293 deaths, the deadliest day so far, took the death toll to 201,187.
Experts believe the official tally vastly underestimates the actual toll in the country of 1.3 billion.
In the capital, New Delhi, ambulances lined up for hours to take COVID-19 victims to makeshift crematorium facilities in parks and parking lots, where bodies burned on rows of funeral pyres.
Coronavirus sufferers - many struggling for breath - flocked to a Sikh temple on the outskirts of the city, hoping to secure some of the limited supplies of oxygen available there.
Police said a fire early on Wednesday at a hospital on the outskirts of Mumbai killed four people and injured several more.
Accidents at hospitals have been of grave concern for the country which is running short of beds and oxygen supplies. Last week a fire broke out at a hospital treating COVID-19 patients and a leaking oxygen tank at another hospital led to the deaths of 22 people.