It is an unwritten rule in journalism that hard-hitting news investigations do not make for good Sunday reading. But April 18 was no regula...
It is an unwritten rule in journalism that hard-hitting news investigations do not make for good Sunday reading. But April 18 was no regular Sunday. A ferocious tidal wave of coronavirus was crashing over India and breathless people were dying, unable to find a hospital bed or oxygen.
My colleagues and I had spent a few days investigating India’s oxygen crisis. One of the startling facts we found was that it had taken the Narendra Modi government eight months after the pandemic began to invite bids for 162 oxygen generation plants. Most still weren’t up and running.
An hour after our report was published, my mother called: my uncle had tested positive for Covid-19. He was 62, diabetic, hypertensive – and his oxygen levels were falling.
#ScrollInvestigation | India is running out of oxygen, #Covid19 patients are dying – because the government wasted timehttps://t.co/LjASgdUGon | @VijaytaL & @psychia90
— scroll.in (@scroll_in) April 19, 2021
I live in Delhi. By far the most privileged city in India, it has the best infrastructure in the country, including among the highest number of hospital beds per 1,000 population.
Last year, in the early weeks of the pandemic, the city had seen a run on hospital beds. But once capacity was expanded and systems were put into place,...
