A desperate daughter gave her Covid-positive mum mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in a bid to save her life at an overwhelmed hospital in India.
Heartbreaking footage captured in northern Uttar Pradesh state on Saturday shows the elderly infected woman lying motionless on a stretcher as her two daughters stand over her.
In the clip, people can be heard complaining about shortage of oxygen and lack of staff at the hospital while India deals with a devastating Covid-19 outbreak.
Emergency Medical Officer Ahtisam Ali said the woman arrived at the hospital “in a gasping condition”.
Maharaj Suheldev Medical College principal AK Sahni claimed that family members said the woman was “on death bed”, Tribune India reports.
(Image: Jam Press/Newslions)
Sadly, by the time medics were able to attend to her, she died.
AK Sahni denied any shortage of oxygen at the hospital, adding: “The daughters of the deceased woman were giving her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation as they became emotional.”
India has recorded more than 300,000 daily Covid infections for the 12th consecutive day on Monday, according to official data.
The total number of infections since the start of the pandemic has reached 19.93 million.
(Image: Jam Press/Newslions)
(Image: Jam Press/Newslions)
The coronavirus death toll in the country rose by 3,417 to 218,959 in the past 24 hours, health ministry data show.
At least 3.4 million people with the disease are currently being treated in India.
Hospitals have filled to capacity, supply of medical oxygen has run short and morgues and crematoriums have been swamped as the country grapples with the surge.
Patients are dying on hospital beds, in ambulances and in car parks outside.
(Image: Getty Images)
Bodies are being burnt in parks while families wait up to 20 hours to honour their dead.
Morgues have run out of stretchers and trees from parks are being used to burn bodies.
Narayan Rao, a district official in the southern town of Chamarajanagar, described the scramble for supplies as “a day-to-day fight”.
Outside a temple in the capital, New Delhi, a group of Sikh volunteers has been providing oxygen to patients lying on benches inside makeshift tents, hooked up to a giant cylinder.
(Image: AFP via Getty Images)
(Image: Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Volunteers say a new patient comes in every 20 minutes or so.
Gurpreet Singh Rummy, who runs the service, told Reuters: “No one should die because of a lack of oxygen. It’s a small thing otherwise, but nowadays, it is the one thing everyone needs.”
The rise in cases comes as only 9% of the population – made of 1.35 billion people – has received a dose of a Covid vaccine.
The Indian Covid-19 variant has now reached at least 17 countries including Britain, Iran and Switzerland, spurring several nations to close borders to travellers from India.
In a bid to help the struggling country, the UK last week sent 200 ventilators, 495 oxygen concentrators and 3 oxygen generation units to India.
It will now send 1,000 extra ventilators to India, the government said yesterday.
Prime ministers Boris Johnson and Modi are set to talk about the coronavirus crisis tomorrow.