A shortage of oxygen cylinders in certain areas has Indian COVID-19 patients gasping for air. Photo: Sanjeev Gupta/EPA

Coronavirus infections also rose by a record, increasing by 295,041 over the last 24 hours, the health ministry data showed on Wednesday. Total deaths reached 182,553.

India’s overall case tally is now at 15.6 million, second only to the United States which has over 31 million infections.

But Indian hospitals are scrambling to shore up supplies of medical oxygen amid rising demand for beds as a fast-spreading second wave of coronavirus stretches the country’s chronically underfunded medical infrastructure to breaking point, officials and doctors said.

Seema Gandotra, sick with the coronavirus, gasped for breath in an ambulance for 10 hours, as it tried unsuccessfully at six hospitals in India’s sprawling capital, New Delhi, to find an open bed.

By the time she was admitted, it was too late, and the 51-year-old died hours later.

Rajiv Tiwari, whose oxygen levels began falling after he tested positive for the virus, has the opposite problem: He identified a hospital that could accommodate him but the 30-something resident of Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh state could not get to it.

“There is no ambulance to take me to hospital,” he said.

Indian hospitals are understaffed and overflowing. Intensive care units are full. Nearly all ventilators are in use and the dead are piling up at crematoriums and graveyards.

Delhi’s government hospitals reported they only had enough oxygen to last another eight to 24 hours while some private ones had enough for just four or five hours.

“We are facing huge problems in oxygen supply but somehow we are managing. Yesterday, it was very critical. We had only four to five hours oxygen in the evening,” said Ronit Kumar, head Biomedical Engineering at Fortis Escorts Heart Institute.

Replenishment came before dawn on Wednesday, with enough to last through the day, he said, adding they were pushing their suppliers. “Since they are also facing huge requirements, so I don’t know. I have not got confirmation,” he said.

“We were hand to mouth but hoping the supply levels will increase from today,” said the hospital source, who is not authorised to speak to media.

There were no beds either for COVID-19 patients in about 80 of 142 hospitals in Delhi, according to government data.

Bhramar Mukherjee, a biostatistician at the University of Michigan who has been tracking India’s pandemic, said India failed to learn from surges elsewhere and take anticipatory measures.

When new infections started dipping in September, authorities thought the worst of the pandemic was over.

Health Minister Harsh Vardhan even declared in March that the country had entered the “endgame”, but he was already behind the curve: average weekly cases in Maharashtra state, home to the financial capital of Mumbai, had tripled in the previous month.

Mukherjee was among those who had urged authorities to take advantage of low cases earlier in the year to speed up vaccinations.

Instead, officials dithered in limiting huge gatherings during Hindu festivals and refused to delay ongoing elections in the eastern West Bengal state, where experts fear that large, unmasked crowds at rallies will fuel the spread of the virus.

Now India’s two largest cities have imposed strict lockdowns, the pain of which will fall inordinately on the poor.

Many have already left big cities, fearing a repeat of last year, when an abrupt lockdown forced many migrant workers to walk to their home villages or risk starvation.