Infections have been reported in India for three consecutive days

(CNN) – India registered 346,786 new Govt-19 cases this Saturday, setting a world record for the third consecutive day of epidemics. International spread of corona virusAccording to government and scientific data.

The death toll in the previous 24 hours had reached 2,624, a daily record in India, with a total of 189,544 deaths.

Rising Govt-19 infections plague Indian communities and hospitals. Everything is less: Beds, medications, oxygen and ventilators in the intensive care unit. The corpses are piled up in mortuaries and crematoriums.

Dr DK Baluja, medical director of the Golden Hospital in Jaipur, said 20 patients suffering from poor health died at a Delhi hospital on Friday night after their oxygen supply was delayed by seven hours.

“It happened last night. All we had was exhausted. Oxygen was not delivered on time. It was supposed to arrive at 5pm, but it arrived at midnight. Sick and sick people need oxygen,” he said.

Currently, the hospital is struggling to get more oxygen, but there was no fresh supply available until Saturday morning. “Now we only have 15 to 20 minutes of oxygen. It may take hours to get another tank,” Falluja told CNN.

Hospitals in Delhi have been facing severe oxygen shortages as the number of COVID-19 cases in the national capital has risen in the past two weeks.

On Saturday morning, Moolchand Hospital tweeted an urgent message to the Delhi government asking for oxygen. “Emergency assistance […] We have more than 135 Govt patients, many with life support, ”the tweet said.

According to the Govt-19 health report released by the Delhi government, 24,331 new cases were reported on Friday, including 348 deaths.

More than 16.6 million cases have been reported worldwide since the outbreak, according to CNN figures from the Indian Ministry of Health.

Saturday’s new number of infections represents the highest number of cases recorded in a single day anywhere in the world. According to CNN estimates from Johns Hopkins University, the United States recorded the world’s highest 300,310 cases in a single day, three days before record-breaking infections in India.

India’s population is approximately four times that of the United States, and its daily incidence is still below that of the United States (in cases per one million people) when the population is adjusted.

“We are going through the worst phase of the epidemic here,” Chandrika Bahadur, chairperson of the Lancet Commission of Govt-19 India, said on Wednesday.

A fire at the hospital has killed 15 patients

To add to the tragedy in India, a fire in the intensive care unit of a hospital in Virar, north of Mumbai, has killed at least 15 corona virus patients, a senior local executive told CNN.

“Suddenly, sparks fell from the air conditioning and ignited within two minutes,” Dr Dilip Shah of Vijay Vallabh Kovit Care Hospital told reporters on Friday.

Suraj Mandare, a senior official in Nashik district, said the fire broke out two days after 24 corona virus patients were waiting for oxygen at Zakir Hussain Hospital in Maharashtra’s Nashik district.

State and local government ministers, including those in Maharashtra, have warned of a second wave and are preparing for action from February. Conversely, A seems to be Head vacuum Within the Union Government, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi was largely silent on the situation until recent weeks.

Until Tuesday, Modi finally stressed the urgency of the situation and presented new measures in a speech to the nation late at night. “The country is once again waging a huge war against Govt-19,” he said. “A few weeks ago, conditions stabilized, and then came the second wave.”

But by then, the Indian eruption was already the largest in the world in terms of absolute daily numbers. According to the World Health Organization, nearly 28% of all new cases worldwide in the past week came from India.

Experts and health workers say that after the first wave subsided, the public abandoned their security with a false sense of security, which is why the second wave advanced rapidly, but this complacency was heightened by government officials like Modi. And Health Minister Harshavardhan, who loudly celebrated the country’s apparent recovery.

The leaders did little to encourage public meetings, allowing them to continue a week-long Hindu pilgrimage with millions of visitors traveling across several states.

The High Adviser defends the government’s response

K Vijayaragavan, chief scientific adviser to the Indian government, told CNN on Friday that no one had predicted the “magnitude of the increase” in cases involving certain expected and unforeseen factors.

He defended the government dealing with the crisis, saying “no matter how much health care capacity increases or increases after the first wave, it is still not enough.”

Vijayaragavan, co-chair of India’s Govt-19 vaccination task force, acknowledged the need to “drastically increase” the production of personal protective equipment, ventilators, hospital facilities and vaccines.

He argued that local control was the way to deal with the situation rather than national locking up, and that action should be taken to “prevent contact with other places from areas with large waves.”

Vijayarajan said the oxygen shortage had “had a major impact on some cities” but the government was expected to increase production, import and supply of oxygen and see results soon.

He said that as the situation stabilized, India would reschedule vaccines to other parts of the world.

“Even in this crisis, India is committed to expanding vaccine development. Here, we have the great challenge of increasing what we are doing, and when our crisis subsides, we will open up to others,” he said.

CNN’s Sugam Pokarel, Isha Mitra and Robert North contributed to the report.