UK sends ventilators and other supplies to India as COVID-19 devastates country

Medical equipment from the UK arrived in India on Tuesday - the first international shipment directed at stemming a devastating Covid-19 surge.

Tuesday, 27th April 2021

COVID-19 deaths in India are reaching higher numbers daily.

Medical equipment from the UK arrived in India on Tuesday - the first international shipment directed at stemming a devastating Covid-19 surge. Ventilators and oxygen supplies arrived in Delhi, but far more will be needed, with India registering 320,000 new conditions on Tuesday and deaths rising close to 200,000 overall. Many hospitals are destroyed, with people serving in the streets outside. The US, France and Germany are between nations sending urgently needed aid. One doctor and management adviser working in Mumbai, Zarir Udwadia, told the BBC the currently pledged numbers were a "drop in the ocean" that would have limited effects. He said that Ahe saw a "ward afterwards full of patients struggling to breathe on fans of various forms and shapes". Dr Udwadia said the satisfaction over getting shot during the first wave had now given way to long lines of people outside healing centres jostling to get shots. "Vaccine scepticism has become vaccine pain," he said. Although India's records currently stand at 17.6 million cases and 197,500 deaths, some think the real figures to be much higher. One study by Indian news channel NDTV found that over the last week in Delhi alone, some 1,158 deaths may have been unrecorded. What aid is arriving? The UK shipment of 200 pieces, including many ventilators and oxygen concentrators - which will help hospitals achieve oxygen supplies - was unloaded at Delhi airport on Tuesday. Foreign ministry spokesman Arindam Bagchi said it was "international co-operation at work", but it is just the first trickle in the hour, which needs to be a flood of supplies for a nation of 1.3 billion people.