The dramatic story of an Indian doctor, amid COVID-19’s biggest health tragedy: “Patients are fine and collapse in a second”

The pandemic of coronavirus in India, it is at the origin of the biggest global health tragedy after the massive emergence of a new local strain, much more dangerous and deadly, which brought the Asian country’s healthcare system to its knees.

“Each sick person used to infect three people and now they infect hundreds. The patients feel good, they have good clinical studies and they are collapsing any second, ”he warned. TN.com.ar the doctor Sanjeev Singh, external consultant for the World Health Organization (WHO) and former regional coordinator of the disease eradication program of this entity in India.

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Singh, infection prevention and antibiotic management advisor for the Indian state of Kerala, said this image is known as “good hypoxia“The silent.

“It wasn’t seen as much in the first wave, but it’s starting to be seen in the second. Patients feel well, in good clinical condition, and collapse any second. The people who collapse the most are the youngest because they are not vaccinated due to the slowness of the vaccination process underway in the country, ”he said.

The silent hypoxia This happens when a patient has very low oxygen saturation in the blood, but has no difficulty breathing. The danger is precisely that it does not show the symptoms of an impending collapse and when it does, the case quickly worsens.

“The number of infected people is too large”, he synthesized.

An explosive emergency

Deaths in India are approaching 4000 per day with more than 380 thousand cases every 24 hours. There are more than 226,000 deaths in the country and infections have exceeded 20.6 million since the start of the pandemic.

Crematoriums are overflowing and facilities have been improvised in parking lots, where bereaved people have to bring their own firewood to cremate their loved ones.

This harsh reality is also leading to a saturation of health workers who have to deal with countless cases on a daily basis. The infectologist Sujith Chandy He did not speak to this site because at the Vellore hospital, where he works, there are over 1400 patients.

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Singh, Indian Ambassador to the Health Care Epidemiology Society of America, said the situation was very dire.

“There is a lack of medicines of all kinds and also of beds with oxygen. Even the best hospitals in the country lack all of these things and it is extremely alarming“.

He added: “The Indian strain is much more contagious. Before, a single person infected three, but now they can infect hundreds and that is why the virus is spreading so massive and fast ”.

A devastating image

Singh said the urgency it’s very devastating. “The spread of the virus is very high and we are unable to contain it with the infrastructure we have. Many people are cared for at home due to a lack of supplies, drugs, vaccines, tests, oxygen beds, etc. », He underlined.

Sanjeev Singh, Indian doctor

We pray to God that it will improve, but the situation is very difficult

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“The situation is critical. We pray to God that it will improve, but the situation is very difficult, ”he added.

And he added: “The medical profession is going through a very bad time of depression because they feel guilty that they cannot help those who need it and that will have a big impact on the future situation. If the number of infections does not decrease, the health system will collapse even more and it will be impossible to manage ”.

The risk of a global impact

For Singh, the situation in India can have a huge global impact if the disease cannot be contained.

“The impact is going to be gigantic because there is a lot of movement of people in and out of the country who can be asymptomatic and show a negative result at the start, which will cause the virus to spread even further, ”he explained.

And he warned: “Like strains from UK, South Africa and Brazil, that from India it will spread in the world and it will be very difficult to control. The overall impact will therefore be very significant ”.

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“Strain expansion is almost inevitable. Overall we are going to have to fight together in a very difficult war. We must stay together, share scientific knowledge and try to neutralize the virus in any way necessary, ”he concluded.