BBC journalists resemble India’s horrors in five years

On March 24, 2020, India announced its first closure COVID, just as the world stood on the verge of a global pandemic, which would require millions of lives.

And already the delicate health care system in India has fallen under the weight of the pandemic.

WHO who has evaluated 4.7 million death cases In India – almost 10 times official count – but the government rejected this figure, citing deficiencies in the methodology.

Five years later, BBC India journalists reflect on their experience, retelling how they sometimes became part of the story they covered.

Soutik Biswas, BBC News

It was the summer of 2021.

I woke up from the fierce voice of the school teacher. Her 46-year-old husband struggled with Covid at Delhi Hospital, where oxygen was as scarce as Hope.

Here we go again, I thought, scary, which crawls. India was trapped in the deadly clutch of the deadly second wave of infections, with Delhi in the heart. And it was just another day in the city where breathing was a privilege.

We moved for help by calling, sending SOS messages, hoping that anyone could withdraw.

Her voice swayed when she told us that the oxygen level had dropped to 58. It had to be 92 and above. He slipped, but she pressed against the little comfort he rose 62. He was still conscious, still talked. As long as.

But how long can it last? I asked the question. How much more life would be lost because the basics – oxygen, beds, medicine – were beyond reach? This should not happen in 2021. Not here.

The woman called back. The hospital did not even have a stream of oxygen, she said. She had to find herself.

We reached again. The phones burst, the tweets flew into the void, hoping that someone would see us. Finally, a device was located – a small victory in the sea of ​​despair. Oxygen will flow. As long as.

However, the numbers did not lie.

A report from the same hospital told about a 40-year-old man who died waiting for a bed. At least he found a stretcher at least in the report. That’s where we were now: grateful for the place to put the dead.

In the conditions of this oxygen was a commodity. There were also medicines that lack and grabbed those who could pay. People died because they could not breathe, and the city was choked from their own apathy.

It was a war. It seemed war. And we lost it.

Yogita Limaye, BBC NEWS

“Balaji, why you’re so lying,” Delhi cried at the GTB hospital, shaking her unconscious brother who was lying on a stretcher.

A few minutes later, her brother, the father of two children, died, waiting near the hospital before he even saw a doctor.

I will never forget her cry.

Around her, the family asked for the hospital door to make the doctor come and see their loved ones.

They were among the hundreds of requests for the help we heard over the weeks, of which we reported about how the second wave of COVID, which began in March 2021, led the nation to its knees.

It was as if it was left to fight the vicious pandemic on their own – going from the hospital to the hospital, looking for beds and oxygen.

The second wave had does not come without warning, But the Indian government, which announced the victory over the disease two months earlier, was caught by an unprepared revival.

In the department of intensive care department, I saw how the chief doctor was walking up and down, making one phone call after another sharp search for oxygen supplies.

“There is only one hour of delivery. Reduce the oxygen that we supply our patients to the lowest levels needed in order for all organs to continue to function properly,” he instructed his deputy, and his face is strained.

I clearly remember the heat and pairs of 37 funeral creeps, which are simultaneously burned under the April sun on the Crematorium of Delhi.

People were shocked – not yet feeling the sadness and anger that would have arisen – it would seem, stunned by the silence of a terrible speed at which Caulda destroyed the capital.

Our messaging groups all the time played with the news about another colleague, desperately demanding a hospital bed for your loved one.

No one was touched by it.

In Pune, my father was healed after a heart attack related to the cause he suffered a month earlier.

Returning to my hometown Mumbai, one of my closest friends lay critically at the IVL in the hospital.

Five weeks later, he recovered in the intensive care department. But my father had never done the heart of my father, and a year later he suffered a mortal heart attack, leaving a permanent hole in our lives.

Covid-19 will always be the most difficult story I have ever covered.

Vikas Pandey, BBC NEWS

Pandemia’s lighting was the hardest task of my life because it is a story that has literally returned home.

Friends, relatives and neighbors call every day, asking to help buy oxygen cylinders, hospital beds and even the necessary medicines. At the time, I interrogated some sorrows.

However, several incidents remained in my memory.

In 2021 I reported The story of Altuf Shamsysumming up the results of the incredible pain that millions have passed.

His pregnant wife and father were infected with the virus and went to various Delhi hospitals. He knew me through a friend and called me to ask if I could help him find another doctor after the hospital where his dad was recognized, told him that the chances of survival were zero. While he was talking to me, he received another call from his wife’s doctor who said they had oxygen.

He lost his father at first and later sent me a message: “I looked at his body, reading SOS reports from the rehabilitation hospital (his wife) oxygen.”

A few days later, he also lost his wife after she gave birth to her daughter.

Two other incidents approached the house than anything else.

The relations deteriorated very quickly after the hospitalization.

He was put on the ventilator, and the doctors gave a gloomy forecast. One of them advised to try an experimental drug that showed some results in the UK.

I wrote in a tweet and called everyone who thought could help. It is difficult to express this disappointment with words – it was immersed with each hour, but drugs that could potentially save it were nowhere.

A good doctor helped us with one injection, but we needed three more. Then someone read my tweet and reached – she bought three vials for his father, but he died before he could give doses. I took her help and my relative survived.

But the cousin did not. He was admitted to the same hospital. Its oxygen level was healed every hour, and it had to be put on the ventilator, but the hospital was not free.

I called all night.

The next morning, oxygen ended in the hospital, which led to many deaths, including it. He left behind his wife and two young children. I’m still wondering if there was something more I could do.

Geeta Pandey, BBC News

In the morning after the Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the tough closure, I headed for the main bus station Delhi. The only people on the streets were police and paratroopers deployed to keep people indoors.

The bus station was deserted. In a few hundred meters, I met men, women and children who sought ways to get home for hundreds of miles. Over the next few days, these figures fell apart by millions when people tried desperately to find a way to be with their families and loved ones.

As the virus made its way over the next few months, and the capital – together with the rest of the country – remained under a strict shutdown, the tragedy hid at each corner.

We were afraid to go out and we were afraid to stay.

All hopes – including in mine – were pressed against the vaccine, which scientists around the world sought to develop.

The last time I visited my mother, a bed in our eternal village 450 miles (724 km) from Delhi, in January 2020, just a couple of months before the closure. My mother, like millions of other people, did not understand what a coffee was a disease that suddenly broke their lives.

Whenever I called, she had only one question: “When do you visit?” The fear that I could transfer her virus at a time when she was the most vulnerable kept me.

On January 16, 2021, I was at Max Hospital in Delhi when India rolled out the world’s largest vaccination, promising to vaccinate all adults in the country of 1.4 billion. Doctors and medical staff called it a “new dawn”. Some told me they would visit their families as soon as they receive a second dose.

I called my mom and told her I would get the vaccine and visit her soon. But a week later, she was gone.

Anagha Pathak, BBC -Morat

A few days after India announced the closure, I was traveling to the Maharashtra state to document the impact of restrictions.

It was three in the morning when I was traveling on a terrible empty Mumbai-Agra highway. My hometown of Nashak looked unrecognizable.

Instead of movement, migrant workers filled the road, going home by meters and easily. Among them was a young couple from Uttar Pradesh. They worked as workers in Mumbai. The wife, back in the early 20’s, was pregnant. They hoped to hit the truck, but it didn’t happen. As long as they reached ours, they ended food, water and money.

I will never forget to see a pregnant woman, her fragile body goes under the scorching sun. I never felt more helpless. Covid protocols prevented me from offering them a trip. All I could do is give them water and snacks, documenting their journey.

A few miles forward, about 300 people were waiting for a government bus to take them to the state border. But it was nowhere. After the calls finally arrived two buses – still not enough. But I became convinced that the couple got to the one who headed toward Madzha -Pradesh, where they had to catch another bus.

I followed them in my car and waited for a while to catch the next bus. It has never come.

After all I went. I had the job to finish.

Five years have passed and I am still surprised: did the woman become at home? Did she survive? I don’t know her name, but I still remember her tired eyes and a weak body.

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