SUCKING THE LIFE AWAY
Desperate Indians beg for oxygen on Twitter while others suck it from bottles on the street & buy amid Covid ‘storm’
DESPERATE Indians have been turning to Twitter to beg for oxygen as the supplies dwindle in the face of the huge Covid surge.
Many were forced to get their oxygen in the street - as they relied on donations or tried to find their own supplies, often paying inflated black market prices.
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In recent days, Covid patients have reportedly been dying on the pavement outside hospitals in India - with doctors fearing infections will soon hit 500,000 per day as they hit a record peak for a fifth day on Monday.
One person is dying every four minutes in the capital of New Delhi, which has been particularly badly hit.
Some experts believe the number of cases could be up five times higher than the official cases show.
It comes as:
- UK sends ventilators to India to help overwhelmed hospitals
- Harrowing video shows Covid patients gasping for breath in hospital
- IPL chiefs vow tournament will go ahead despite the crisis
- India threatens to 'hang' officials delaying oxygen supplies
- Cases could hit 500,000 a day as death toll mounts
Hospitals are turning away patients and supplies of oxygen running short.
In response, people are bypassing the conventional lines of communication and turning to Twitter to crowdsource help for oxygen cylinders.
Twitter is not as widely used in India as Facebook or WhatsApp.
But it is proving a more valuable tool to get pleas for help out because of its "re-tweet" function that can quickly sent message through users' networks of contacts.
“Twitter is having to do what the government helpline numbers should be doing. We are on our own folks,” wrote user Karanbir Singh.
Twitter is having to do what the government helpline numbers should be doing.
Karanbir Singh
Software developed Umang Galaiya, 25, has created a website that allows users to select the name of the city and the requirement - be it oxygen or medicine.
The site then directs them on Twitter using its advance search feature and so far it has received more than 110,000 hits.
"Every other tweet on my feed has been about Covid," Galaiya said.
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Sikh aid group Khalsa Help International has been dispensing the small quantities of oxygen it has been able to get hold of to help those in urgent need in Ghaziabad city, on the outskirts of Delhi
Cars, vans and rickshaws carrying Covid patients and their families choked the street outside the temple on Saturday, as volunteers holding black oxygen cylinders spread out to help.
People lying on makeshift beds on the street sucked oxygen from tanks laid out by the volunteers.
"I came here because I didn't get help anywhere else," said Manoj Kumar, who sat next to his mother Devi in the car as a volunteer monitored the flow of oxygen from the tank to her masked mouth.
"I called the gurudwara and they asked me to reach here fast.”
Many including Anshu Priya are turning the black market to get oxygen, in her case for her father-in-law as his condition continued to deteriorate, the BBC reports.
She spent most of Sunday looking for an oxygen cylinder but her search was futile.
So she finally turned to the black market and paid a hefty amount 50,000 rupees - £480 - to procure a cylinder that normally costs 6,000 rupees.
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