Kenya’s Department of Gender says reported cases of gender-based violence have nearly quintupled during the COVID-19 pandemic. But campaigners note that stigma and fear of reporting abuse means the number of cases that go unreported is many times higher. Victoria Amunga reports from Nairobi. 
Camera: Robert Lutta
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In a landmark case brought by seven environmental groups, a Dutch court Wednesday ordered energy company Royal Dutch Shell (RDS) to cut its carbon emissions by net 45% from 2019 levels by 2030.The ruling could set a precedent for similar cases against polluting multinationals, particularly petroleum companies, around the world.The environmental groups, which included the Dutch chapter of Greenpeace, filed the suit in 2019 on behalf of 17,000  Dutch citizens. The groups had argued RDS was in breach of its obligation to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.In her decision, Hague District Court Judge Larissa Alwin ruled that since the Anglo-Dutch energy giant currently has a plan to reduce emissions and was still developing it, it is not currently in breach of its obligation, as the groups argued.But the judge said a violation of that obligation is imminent, as the company’s policy “is not concrete, has many caveats and is based on monitoring social developments rather than the company’s own responsibility for achieving a CO2 reduction.She ordered the company to make the 45% cuts by 2030, which would be in line with the 2016 Paris Agreement on climate change.The case in the Netherlands is the latest in a string of legal challenges filed around the world by climate activists seeking action to rein in emissions, but it is believed to be the first targeting a multinational company.In statement ahead of the ruling, RDS has said litigation will do little to accelerate the world’s transition away from fossil fuels.  
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A former chief aide to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told a parliamentary committee Wednesday the government failed the British people in its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a statement Johnson rejects.  
Dominic Cummings, who left the government in December, explained to a select committee investigating the government’s pandemic response how Johnson failed to take the pandemic seriously early on, dismissing it as a “scare story.”  He said ministers and officials literally went on vacation in February of 2020.
Cummings said, “When the public needed us most the government failed. And I’d like to say to all the families of those who have died unnecessarily how sorry I am for the mistakes that were made and my own mistakes of that.”
The former aide said Johnson had been told Britain needed to be locked down on March 14, 2020, but there was no plan to do so.  He said the prime minister had been advised the peak of the pandemic would be in June, when, in fact, the National Health Service was already in danger of being overwhelmed.
Cummings had been a chief strategist behind the 2016 Brexit campaign and Johnson’s landslide election win in 2019. Since leaving Johnson’s team late last year, Cummings has become one of his former boss’s most vocal critics over how the prime minister led his team in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic last year, describing it as “disastrous.”
Johnson responded to his former aide’s testimony from the floor of the lower house of parliament Wednesday, saying he takes full responsibility for the government’s response to the pandemic. He rejected Cummings claim the government had been complacent in its response to the pandemic at any point.  
He said, “I maintain my point that the government acted throughout with the intention to save life and protect the NHS [National Health Service] and in accordance with the best scientific advice. That’s exactly what we did.”
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The first total lunar eclipse in more than two years coincides with a “supermoon” Wednesday, putting on a cosmic show for at least half the world.A total lunar eclipse occurs when the moon passes completely through the Earth’s dark shadow, or umbra. During this type of eclipse, the moon will gradually get darker, taking on a rusty or blood-red color. The color is so striking, lunar eclipses are sometimes called blood moons.This lunar eclipse coincides with the moon’s nearest approach to Earth, making it appear as the closet and largest full moon of the year. This is what is commonly referred to as a supermoon.The super “blood” moon will be visible Wednesday across the Pacific — offering the best viewing — as well as the western half of North America, bottom of South America and eastern Asia. Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, including Hawaii, will also see the eclipse in its entirety.The total eclipse will last about 15 minutes as Earth passes directly between the moon and the sun. But the entire show will last five hours, as Earth’s shadow gradually covers the moon, then starts to ebb. The reddish-orange color is the result of all the sunrises and sunsets in Earth’s atmosphere projected onto the surface of the eclipsed moon.May’s full moon was known by early Native American tribes as the flower moon because this was the time of year when spring flowers appeared in abundance.
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The situation in pandemic-ravaged South Asia is “unlike anything our region has seen before,” the regional director of UNICEF said Tuesday.”The sheer scale and speed of this new surge of COVID-19 is outstripping countries’ abilities to provide life-saving treatment,” George Laryea-Adjei told reporters Monday in Geneva.Laryea-Adjei said that while India recorded the highest-ever single-day death toll from COVID-19 – 4,529 deaths in one day last week – an estimated 228,000 children and 11,000 mothers across the region died due to disruptions in essential health care services.“With a surge that is four times the size of the first, we are facing a real possibility of a sever spike in child and maternal deaths in South Asia,” he said.India has recorded nearly 27 million cases of COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Many believe the number is much higher because of a lack of testing.Olympic warningWith less than two months remaining before the opening ceremony, the Tokyo Olympics received another jolt Monday when the U.S. government issued a warning for its citizens not to travel to Japan due to rising rates of new COVID-19 cases.The State Department issued its highest travel advisory warning, Level 4, citing Japan’s slow vaccination rate and the country’s own restrictions on travelers from the United States.People wearing masks to help protect against the spread of the coronavirus walk in front of a screen showing the news on U.S. warning against visits to Japan, May 25, 2021, in Tokyo.A separate warning issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said “even fully vaccinated travelers may be at risk for getting and spreading COVID-19 variants and should avoid all travel to Japan.”The Tokyo Olympics are scheduled to take place from July 23 to August 8 after a one-year postponement as the novel coronavirus pandemic began spreading across the globe. But the Japanese capital and other parts of Japan are under a state of emergency to quell a surge of new infections that has overwhelmed hospitals across the country, prompting growing public sentiment against staging the event.The opposition was boosted by an open letter earlier this month from the Tokyo Medical Practitioners Association, which represents about 6,000 primary care doctors and hospitals, urging Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga to convince the International Olympic Committee to cancel the games.Senior citizens wait to receive a COVID-19 vaccine at a large-scale vaccination center in Osaka, western Japan, May 24, 2021, in this photo distributed by Kyodo.The current outbreak has already prompted Japanese authorities to ban foreign audiences from attending the Olympics.  But Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato told reporters Tuesday the warning does not prohibit essential travel to Japan, and that authorities there do not detect any change in  Washington’s support for Japan to go through with staging the Olympics.Japan has recorded just 722,668 total COVID-19 infections and 12,351 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, but has only inoculated just under five percent of its population.Expiring vaccinesIn Hong Kong, a high-ranking official is warning that the city may soon have to discard millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses because not enough people are getting inoculated before the doses expire.Thomas Tsang, a former controller of Hong Kong’s Centre for Health Protection and a member of the government’s vaccine task force, told public broadcaster RTHK Tuesday there is only a “three-month window” to use the first batch of the two-dose Pfizer vaccine, a situation complicated by current plans to close the community vaccination centers after September.Migrant workers queue up for Covid-19 testing in the Central district of Hong Kong, May 1, 2021.Hong Kong bought rough doses of Pfizer and China’s Sinovac vaccine to cover its entire 7.5 million citizens, but only 2.1 million have taken the shots since the city’s vaccination program began in late February.Tsang said it was “just not right” that Hong Kong was sitting on an unused pile of doses while the rest of the world “is scrambling for vaccines” and warned that the city would not be buying anymore doses.Observers have blamed the situation on a number of factors, including vaccine hesitancy, online disinformation, a lack of urgency in a city that has largely avoided a major outbreak of the virus, and rising distrust of authorities in Hong Kong and China. 
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U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra on Tuesday called on the World Health Organization (WHO) to conduct a second, more fully transparent investigation into the origins of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.The WHO issued a joint statement with Chinese scientists in March after the agency led a four-week mission to the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the first cases of the coronavirus emerged in December 2019. But the U.S. and other nations raised concerns about the way the mission was carried out and the lack of cooperation from China. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also agreed that further studies were needed into the virus’ origins.In a video message at the annual ministerial meeting of the WHO’s World Health Assembly, Becerra called for a second phase of the investigation to be launched “with terms of reference that are transparent, science-based and give international experts the independence to fully assess the source of the virus and the early days of the outbreak.”Becerra did not mention China directly, but his remarks follow a Wall Street Journal report from Sunday in which U.S. officials are quoted saying three Chinese researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology sought hospital care in November 2019, a month before the first confirmed coronavirus case in China.Dr. Anthony Fauci, senior White House health adviser and director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, said in a recent interview he was also not convinced about the natural origins of the coronavirus and called for further investigations.
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The U.S. biotechnology firm Moderna said Tuesday that recent trials of its COVID-19 vaccine show it to be safe and effective on adolescents ages 12 to 17.  The company said it will submit the findings to the U.S. Food and Drug administration (FDA) next month for emergency approval.  
In a release posted to its website, Moderna said the trials involved more than 3,700 12 to 17-year-olds.  It said preliminary findings showed the vaccine triggered the same signs of immune protection in young people it does in adults, and the same kind of temporary side effects such as sore arms, headache and fatigue.  
In the statement, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said the company was encouraged by the results, and said it will submit them to the FDA as well as other global regulators in early June to request authorization.
Earlier this month, the COVID-19 vaccine manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech became the first one approved for use on adolescents in the United States and Canada. Europe’s drug regulator, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) is currently reviewing the company’s vaccine for use on adolescents.
Both Pfizer and Moderna have begun testing in even younger children, from age 11 down to 6-month-old babies. That testing is more complex. While teens receive the same dose as adults, smaller doses are needed for younger children. Experts hope to see the results of those trials later this year.
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Tens of thousands of people were evacuated Tuesday in low-lying areas of two Indian states and moved to cyclone shelters to escape a powerful storm barreling toward the eastern coast. Cyclone Yaas is set to turn into a “very severe cyclonic storm” with sustained wind speeds of up to 177 kilometers per hour (110 miles per hour), the India Meteorological Department said. The cyclone is expected to make landfall early Wednesday in Odisha and West Bengal states. The cyclone coming amid a devastating coronavirus surge complicates India’s efforts to deal with both just 10 days after Cyclone Tauktae hit India’s west coast and killed more than 140 people. Thousands of emergency personnel have been deployed in coastal regions of the two states for evacuation and any possible rescue operations, said S.N. Pradhan, director of India’s National Disaster Response Force. India’s air force and navy were also on standby to carry out relief work. Fishing trawlers and boats have been told to take shelter until further notice as forecasters warned of high tidal waves. In West Bengal, authorities were scrambling to move tens of thousands of people to cyclone shelters. Officials said at least 20 districts in the state will feel the brunt of the storm. Last May, nearly 100 people died in Cyclone Amphan, the most powerful storm in more than a decade to hit eastern India, including West Bengal state. It flattened villages, destroyed farms and left millions without power in eastern India and Bangladesh. “We haven’t been able to fix the damage to our home from the last cyclone. Now another cyclone is coming, how will we stay here?” said Samitri, who uses only one name. In Odisha, a state already battered by coronavirus infections, authorities evacuated nearly 15,000 people living along the coast and moved them to cyclone shelters, senior officer Pradeep Jena said. In a televised address Monday, the state’s chief minister, Naveen Patnaik, appealed to people being moved to cyclone shelters to wear double masks and maintain social distancing. He asked authorities to distribute masks to the evacuated people. “We have to face both the challenges simultaneously,” Patnaik said. 
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Ahead of what is forecast to be an above-normal hurricane season in the Atlantic Basin, the U.S. government is doubling funding to prepare communities for such storms or other extreme weather events.  “We have to be ready when disaster strikes,” President Joe Biden said on a visit to Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) headquarters Monday afternoon.  “Today’s briefing is a critical reminder that we don’t have a moment to lose in preparing for 2021,” the president said at FEMA, just prior to being briefed on this year’s hurricane season.  Biden also noted the risks from wildfires in California and other Western states.  “I’m here today to make it clear that I want nothing less than readiness for all these challenges,” the president said.  FEMA employees listen to President Joe Biden talk at FEMA headquarters, in Washington, May 24, 2021. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting a 60% chance of an above-normal Atlantic storm season with six to 10 likely hurricanes.  Last year was a record hurricane season in the United States with 30 named storms — five of those making landfall just in the state of Louisiana.   The coasts of Louisiana and Florida are particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels, even without severe storms.  “Certainly, much of South Florida without further action — and much of Louisiana around the New Orleans area — could be underwater and even more regularly flooding. It’ll put a lot of infrastructure and lives at risk,” said Sherri Goodman, senior fellow at the Wilson Center’s Polar Institute and Environmental Change and Security Program.  In all, according to government officials, 22 separate weather and climate-related disasters caused nearly $100 billion worth of damage.  “FEMA will provide $1 billion in 2021 for the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program, a portion of which will be targeted to disadvantaged communities,” according to the White House statement announcing the funding.  Earlier in the day, the White House also announced the U.S. space agency, NASA, will collect more sophisticated climate data as part of a new mission concept for an Earth system observatory.    “NASA’s Earth system observatory will be a new architecture of advanced spaceborne Earth observation systems, providing the world with an unprecedented understanding of the critical interactions between Earth’s atmosphere, land, ocean and ice processes. These processes determine how the changing climate will play out at regional and local levels, on near and long-term time scales,” the White House statement said.  Biden last week ordered federal agencies to identify and disclose hazards from climate change. The executive order also requires suppliers to the federal government to reveal their own risks associated with climate change.  “We really need to be better able to manage the climate as a threat multiplier,” added Goodman, who is also senior strategist for the Center for Climate and Security. She called the actions of the Biden administration so far “a very comprehensive and forward-looking set of efforts.”  
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The World Health Organization chief opened the agency’s annual World Health Assembly in Geneva Monday by paying tribute to the 115,000 health care workers around the world who lost their lives fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. In his comments to the WHO decision-making body, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the world’s health and care workers have stood in the breach between life and death for nearly 18 months. He said they have saved countless lives and fought for others who, despite their best efforts, slipped away.  Tedros said he was pleased numbers of new cases and deaths had fallen for three straight weeks, but cautioned the world remains in a very dangerous situation. He said, “We must be very clear: the pandemic is not over, and it will not be over until and unless transmission is controlled in every last country.” The WHO chief again criticized the world’s wealthiest nations for what he called the “scandalous inequity” in the delivery of COVID-19 vaccines that is “perpetuating the pandemic.” He noted more than 75 percent of all vaccine doses have been administered in just 10 countries.  He called on member nations to support a massive push to vaccinate at least 10 percent of the population of every country by September, and a “drive to December” to vaccinate at least 30 percent by the end of the year.  Taiwan criticize WHO ‘indifference’Earlier, Taiwan criticized what it calls the “indifference” of the WHO to the health rights of the island’s people. Taiwan was not invited to the World Health Assembly because it says the WHO has given into pressure from China.  In a joint statement, Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu and Health Minister Chen Shih-chung said “As a professional international health body, the World Health Organization should serve the health and welfare of all humanity and not capitulate to the political interests of a certain member.” Taiwan is excluded from most international organizations like the WHO because of objections from China, which considers the self-governing island to be part its territory and not an independent country.  On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal reported that three scientists from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, or WIV, in Wuhan, China were admitted to the hospital in November 2019 — a month before China confirmed its first coronavirus case. The news will likely add fuel to the theory that the virus may have escaped a Chinese laboratory. India at over 300,000 deathsIndia became the third country Monday to surpass 300,000 deaths related to COVID-19, after the health ministry reported more than 4,000 COVID-19 deaths in the previous 24 hours. The U.S. has recorded nearly 590,000 deaths, while Brazil is approaching 450,000. The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reports 3.4 million global COVID-19 deaths.  Also Monday, India reported 222,315 new COVID-19 cases in the past 24-hour period, a significant drop for the South Asian nation that was experiencing more than 400,000 new daily infections just a few weeks ago. However, public health officials believe that India’s toll is likely undercounted because of limited testing resources.  Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Monday 167 million global COVID-19 infections. The U.S. has more infections than any other country at 33 million cases. India is next with 26.7 million, while Brazil is ranked third with 16 million.   
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For the family of the retired diplomat, the terror struck as they tried desperately to get him past the entrance doors of a private hospital. For the New Delhi family, it came when they had to create a hospital room in their ground-floor apartment. For the son of an illiterate woman who raised her three children by scavenging human hair, it came as his mother waited days for an ICU bed, insisting she’d be fine.
Three families in a nation of 1.3 billion. Seven cases of COVID-19 in a country facing an unparalleled surge, with more than 300,000 people testing positive every day.
When the pandemic exploded here in early April, each of these families found themselves struggling to keep relatives alive as the medical system neared collapse and the government was left unprepared.
Across India, families scour cities for coronavirus tests, medicine, ambulances, oxygen and hospital beds. When none of that works, some have to deal with loved ones zippered into body bags.
The desperation comes in waves. New Delhi was hit at the start of April, with the worst coming near the end of the month. The southern city of Bengaluru was hit about two weeks later. The surge is at its peak now in many small towns and villages, and just reaching others.
But when a pandemic wave hits, everyone is on their own. The poor. The rich. The well-connected bureaucrats who hold immense sway here, and the people who clean the sewers. Wealthy businessmen fight for hospital beds, and powerful government officials send tweets begging for oxygen. Middle-class families scrounge wood for funeral pyres, and in places where there is no wood to be found, hundreds of families have been forced to dump their relatives’ bodies into the Ganges River.
The rich and well-connected, of course, still have money and contacts to smooth the search for ICU beds and oxygen tanks. But rich and poor alike have been left gasping for breath outside overflowing hospitals.
“This has now become normal,” said Abhimanyu Chakravorty, 34, whose extended New Delhi family frantically tried to arrange his father’s medical care at home. “Everyone is running helter-skelter, doing whatever they can to save their loved ones.”
But every day, thousands more people die.Chakravorty family, New Delhi
COVID-19 tests. That is all the family wanted after a niggling cough had spread from relative to relative. But in a city where the virus had descended like a whirlwind, even that had become difficult.
First, they called the city’s top diagnostic labs. Then the smaller ones. They called for days.
The ground-floor apartment, in an affluent neighborhood with a tiny, well-tended garden and a spreading hibiscus tree in bloom, has been home to the Chakravorty family for more than 40 years. There’s 73-year-old Prabir, the family patriarch and widower, a construction executive who has long ignored his family’s pleas to stop working, and his two sons, Prateek and Abhimanyu.
Prateek, who runs an air-conditioning company, shares a room with his wife, Shweta, and their seven-year-old son Agastya. Rounding out the clan is Prabir’s sister, Taposhi, and her adult son, Protim.
They tried to isolate as best they could, seven of them retreating to various corners of the three-bedroom apartment, and kept calling testing centers.
It was not supposed to be like this.
In January, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared victory over COVID-19. In March, the health minister claimed the country was in the pandemic’s “endgame.”
By then, medical experts had been warning for weeks of an approaching viral wave. The government ignored the warnings, allowing the immense Kumbh Mela religious festival to go forward, with millions of Hindu devotees gathering shoulder-to-shoulder along the Ganges River. Hundreds of thousands also turned out for state election rallies.
The Chakravorty family, like most Indians, hadn’t expected things to grow so bad. Certainly not in the capital, which has much better medical care than most of the country, and where those with money have access to private hospitals.
Finally, Shweta found a lab to administer tests. A man arrived in head-to-toe in protective clothing to swab everyone. It seemed, he told them wearily, as if everyone in this city of 29 million people needed coronavirus tests.
The family had their first scare the next day, when a weakened Prabir nearly fell and his sons had to carry him to bed. Stomach problems and a raging fever kept him there.
“He was visibly shaking,” said Abhimanyu, a 34-year-old news editor.
They got the results three days later. Four members of the family tested positive, with a few losing their senses of taste and smell. But it was far worse for Prabir.
Prateek struggled to find a doctor for his father. One wouldn’t answer the phone, another had his own emergency. Finally, a relative in Thailand contacted a friend, a New Delhi doctor, who said the 73-year-old needed a chest CT scan.
Prateek ventured out on April 28 to find a lab in a scarred city, with roads empty except for ambulances and oxygen tankers. The scan confirmed their fears: Prabir had pneumonia. Doctors warned the family to be very watchful.
Their worries deepened every night, when Prabir coughed relentlessly and his blood oxygen levels dropped dangerously.
“It was an alarm bell,” said Abhimanyu.Padmavathi’s Family, Bengaluru
In a small community of homemade huts, a short walk from one of Bengaluru’s wealthiest neighborhoods, one woman’s sore throat was turning into breathing problems.
The people here are at the bottom of India’s caste ladder, “rag pickers” who support themselves by collecting the city’s waste and selling it to recyclers.
Shunned by most Indians, they are an informal – but pivotal – part of the urban infrastructure. India is among the world’s largest waste producers, and a city like Bengaluru, the Silicon Valley of India, would drown in its own trash if not for them. Yet when vaccines began to be distributed, with essential workers at the front of the line, they were left off that list.
Some people collect newspapers in the little community. Some pick through dumps. Some specialize in metal. Padmavathi, who uses one name, collected hair, taking it from women’s combs and hairbrushes to later be used for wigs. She earned about $50 a month.
It is a life along the fringes, but Padmavathi, who never went to school and whose name translates from Sanskrit as “She who emerged from the lotus,” made it work.
“She was very pushy about our education,” said her son, Gangaiah, a community health worker for a non-profit group.
But her oldest daughter had to drop out in sixth grade, when Padmavathi ran out of money. Gangaiah only made it to seventh. She succeeded with her youngest, a seventh-grade daughter who earned a scholarship and now lives in a private school dormitory across town.
Padmavathi shares a one-room hut made from bamboo and plastic sheeting with Gangaiah, his wife and their two children.
Gangaiah’s work meant he could quickly get Padmavathi tested when her symptoms started May 1. It meant he had access to an oximeter to test his mother’s blood oxygen level.
But when those levels began to drop, he could not get her into a hospital. Working with colleagues in the non-profit, he began calling. Again and again, he was told every bed was taken.
By the fifth day, with Padmavathi’s oxygen levels dangerously low and her breathing sometimes coming in gasps, Gangaiah’s colleagues finally found a bed.
She left the neighborhood unworried.
“I’ll be back soon. Don’t worry,” she told her neighbors.
The hospital had oxygen, but everyone said she needed to be in an ICU on a ventilator. That was impossible.
“It was sheer helplessness,” said Gangaiah.Amrohi Family, Gurgaon
Ashok Amrohi thought it was just a cold when he began coughing on April 21. After all, the retired diplomat and his wife had both been fully vaccinated against coronavirus.
A medical doctor before joining the diplomatic corps, Ashok had traveled the world. He had been ambassador to Algeria, Mozambique and Brunei, and had retired to Gurgaon, a city just outside the capital, and a life of golf and piano lessons. He was a respected, highly educated member of the upper-middle class.
He was someone who, in normal times, could easily get a bed in the best hospitals.
His fever soon disappeared. But his breathing became labored and his oxygen levels dropped. It appeared to be COVID-19. His wife, Yamini, reached out for help. A sister who lived nearby found an oxygen cylinder.
The situation seemed manageable at first, and they treated Ashok at home.
“I was always with him,” said Yamini.
But his oxygen levels kept dropping.
If things worsened even a little more, his family would have no idea how to respond.Chakravorty Family, New Delhi
Reluctantly, as Prabir’s condition also worsened, the Chakravorty family decided he needed to be hospitalized.
First, they tried a government-run mobile app showing the city’s available beds. It was not functioning. So Prateek went searching.
The first three hospitals he visited — private, costly hospitals, built for India’s growing population of new money — were full.
Then he went to the massive 1,200-bed public field hospital built last June in a leafy New Delhi neighborhood. The hospital had been closed in February when cases fell in north India, and frantically reopened in late April as cases surged.
Outside the hospital entrance, Prateek found dozens of people begging staff to admit sick family members. Some were openly offering bribes to cut the line, others slumped on the floor breathing from oxygen bottles.
Worried families were waiting under a nearby canopy for news – any news – about loved ones inside. Some hadn’t seen their relatives in weeks.
“You know nothing,” one person told him.
The army doctors running the facility, who were refusing the bribes, were working frantically. They had little time for patient comfort, let alone worried relatives.
Prateek was stunned at the scene: “My body trembled.”
Beneath the canopy, he met a sobbing young man whose father had died and been taken away for cremation. But in the chaos, ID numbers attached to some corpses had been mixed up, and the wrong body was carted off for cremation.
His father’s body was now lost inside the complex, where death had become mundane.
At that moment, Prateek decided: “We will do what we can at home, this wasn’t an option.”
Padmavathi’s Family, Bengaluru
Late on the night of May 5, an ICU bed finally opened up for Padmavathi, whose condition was clearly deteriorating.
“She kept telling other people that she’d soon be fine,” said Gangaih.
Padmavathi was a fighter and knew how hard India could be on the least fortunate. She had grown up in a family so poor they often did not have enough food and was a traveling laborer by the time she was seven. She married at 14 and raised three children alone after her husband abandoned her.
“She was a sad person, but she would hide her melancholy from us,” said Gangaiah. She buried her sadness in more work: “She sacrificed everything she had for us. Her struggle to feed us and raise us consumed all her time.”
Joy only came when her oldest daughter and Gangaiah had children.
“She was so happy. Perhaps the only time we saw her happy in a real sense,” he said.
She was also a force in the neighborhood, helping other women with their troubles, and fighting to ban the cheap and sometimes poisonous home-made liquor that kills hundreds of India’s poor every year.
But in the hospital that night, none of that mattered.
A few hours after being transferred to the ICU, amid the noise of medical machinery, Padmavathi died. She was 48 years old.
Gangaiah was waiting outside when it happened.
“I cried bitterly,” he said. “I had hardly seen my father’s love and care. She was both my parents.”
He is furious.
“We also knew from experience that the government is for rich people and the upper castes. But we always nurtured this belief that at least hospitals will cater to us in our time of need,” he said. “It turned out to be an utterly fake belief, a lie.”Amrohi Family, Gurgaon
At the Amrohi apartment, the former ambassador’s family was calling his medical school classmates for help. One eventually arranged a bed at a nearby hospital.
It was April 26. The brutal north Indian summer was coming on. Temperatures that day reached nearly 105 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius).
His wife, Yamini, and their adult son Anupam put him into the family’s compact SUV.
They arrived about 7:30 p.m. and parked in front of the main doors, thinking Ashok would be rushed inside. They were wrong. Admission paperwork had to be completed first, and the staff was swamped.
So, they waited.
Anupam stood in line while Yamini stayed in the car with Ashok, who was breathing bottled oxygen. She blasted the air-conditioning, trying to keep him cool.
An hour passed. Two hours. Someone came to swab Ashok for a coronavirus test. It came back positive. His breathing had grown difficult.
“I went thrice to the hospital reception for help. I begged, pleaded and shouted at the officials,” she said. “But nobody budged.”
At one point, their daughter called from London, where she lives with her family. With everyone on a video call, their four-year-old grandson asked to talk to Ashok.
“I love you, Poppy,” he said.
Ashok pulled off his oxygen mask: “Hello. Poppy loves you too.”
Three hours.
Four hours.
Anupam returned regularly to the car to check on his father.
“It’s almost done,” he would tell him each time. “Everything is going to be alright. Please stay with us!”
Five hours.
A little after midnight, Ashok grew agitated, pulling off the oxygen mask and gasping. His chest heaved. Then he went still.
“In a second he was no more,” Yamini said. “He was dead in my arms.”
Yamini went to the reception desk: “You are murderers,” she told them.Chakravorty Family, New Delhi
Prateek Chakravorty returned from the field hospital and told his family about the nightmare there. All agreed Prabir would be treated at home.
The brothers grew up in this pink three-story building. It is where they returned to after evenings playing soccer. It is where they spent India’s harsh, months-long lockdown last year, glad to be together.
Now it was where they had to help their father breathe.
For rich countries, oxygen is a basic medical need, like running water. Last year, Indian authorities ordered most of the country’s industrial oxygen production to switch to medical oxygen.
But it was nowhere near enough for the surge’s ferocity. Hospitals went on social media, begging the federal government for more oxygen. The government responded to social media criticism by ordering Twitter to take down dozens of tweets.
The Chakravorty family decided their best bet was an oxygen concentrator. Unaffordable to most Indians, with prices reaching $5,500, concentrators remove nitrogen from the air and deliver a stream of concentrated oxygen.
They reached out to friends, relatives, business colleagues – anyone they could think of – trying to find one.
It is how things work now in India. With the formal medical system barely functioning, tight networks of family, friends and colleagues, and sometimes the generosity of complete strangers, would save many. Informal volunteer networks have germinated to reuse medical equipment and look for hospital beds. The black market thrives, charging astronomical prices.
A friend responded to their SOS. Sougata Roy knew someone in Chandigarh, a city in the Himalayan foothills about a five-hour drive away, who had a machine and was not using it. He offered to get it.
Roy arrived April 27 with the machine and instructions.
On April 29, the family found someone to care for their father. He was not a trained nurse, but had experience treating COVID-19 patients at home.
Prabir’s signs of improvement were slow, but the family grasped at them, overjoyed when he could eat a little boiled chicken. They celebrated quietly each time his oxygen levels were good, knowing they were lucky to have the resources to treat him at home.
“It was hell,” said Prateek, remembering the worst two weeks. Slowly, though, their optimism grew.
May 7 was Prateek’s birthday. Prabir looked brighter, and the relieved family decided to celebrate. They ordered chocolate cake from a nearby bakery.
Prabir did not want any. But for the first time in weeks, he was craving something sweet.
He settled for a cookie.Amrohi Family, Gurgaon
The horror did not end with the ambassador’s death.
Ashok’s body, sealed in a plastic bag, was taken by ambulance the next morning to an outdoor cremation ground.
Cremations are deeply important in Hinduism, a way to free a person’s soul so it can be reborn elsewhere. A priest normally oversees the rites. Family and friends gather. The eldest son traditionally lights the funeral pyre.
But when the Amrohis got to the cremation ground, a long line of ambulances was in front of them. Beyond the gate, nine funeral pyres were blazing.
Finally, Anupam was called to light his father’s pyre.
Normally, families wait as the fire burns down, paying their respects and waiting for the ashes. But immense fires burned around the Amrohi family. The heat was crushing. Ashes filled the air.
“I have never seen a scene like that,” said Yamini. “We couldn’t stand it.”
They returned to their car, waited until they were told the body had been cremated, and drove away.
Anupam returned the next morning to collect his father’s ashes.
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Taiwan has criticized what it calls the “indifference” of the World Health Organization to the health rights of the island’s people, according to Reuters. The WHO’s decision-making body, the World Health Assembly, begins its A man reacts as a health worker in protective suit takes his nasal swab sample to test for COVID-19 in New Delhi, India, May 22, 2021.India became the third country Monday to surpass 300,00 deaths related to COVID, after the health ministry reported more than 4,000 COVID deaths in the previous 24 hours. The U.S. has recorded nearly 590,000 deaths, while Brazil is approaching 450,000. The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reports 3.4 million global COVID deaths.   Also Monday, India reported 222,315 new COVID cases in the past 24-hour period, a significant drop for the South Asian nation that was experiencing more than 400,000 new daily infections just a few weeks ago. However, public health officials believe that India’s toll is likely undercounted because of limited testing resources. 
The Indian government said Saturday that while COVID-19 infections remain high as they spread to overburdened rural areas, the infections are stabilizing in some parts of the country. While a new variant of the virus first found in India has raised alarm around the world, a new study found Saturday that vaccines by Pfizer and AstraZeneca are effective against it after two doses. The study by Public Health England found that Pfizer’s vaccine is 88% effective against B.1.617.2, or the Indian variant, and 93% effective against B.1.1.7, now known as the Kent variant. AstraZeneca’s vaccine is 60% effective against the Indian variant and 66% effective against the English variant. In both cases, the effectiveness was measured two weeks after the second shot and against symptomatic disease. Both vaccines had limited effectiveness after just one dose.  The Kent variant is the dominant strain in England, but health officials fear the Indian strain may outpace it. Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Monday 167 million global COVID-19 infections. The U.S. has more infections than any other country at 33 million cases. India is next with 26.7 million, while Brazil is ranked third with 16 million. 
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An investigation was underway Monday into the deaths of 21 runners during a mountain ultra-marathon in northwest China, as harrowing testimony emerged from survivors who battled to safety through freezing temperatures and bone-chilling winds. The extreme weather struck a high-altitude section of the 100-kilometer (62-mile) race held in the scenic Yellow River Stone Forest in Gansu province Saturday afternoon. Provincial authorities have set up an investigation team to look into the cause of the incident, state media reported, as questions swirled over why organizers apparently ignored extreme weather warnings from the city’s Early Warning Information Center in the lead up to the race, which attracted 172 runners. China’s top sports body also vowed to tighten safety rules on holding events across the country. Survivors gave shocking testimony of events on the rugged mountainside, where unconfirmed meteorological reports to local media said temperatures had plunged to as low as minus 24 degrees Celsius (minus 11 degrees Fahrenheit). “The wind was too strong, and I repeatedly fell over,” wrote race participant Zhang Xiaotao in a Weibo post. “My limbs were frozen stiff, and I felt like I was slowly losing control of my body… I wrapped my insulation blanket around me, took out my GPS tracker, pressed the SOS button and lost consciousness.” He said when he came round he discovered a shepherd had carried him to a cave, placed him by the fire and wrapped him in a duvet. ‘Foaming at their mouths’Marathon survivor Luo Jing told state broadcaster CCTV she saw runners struggling back down the mountain wearing only T-shirts and shorts. They “described to us people foaming at their mouths, and urged us to quit the race as soon as possible,” she said. Other survivors said insulation blankets provided by organizers were blown to shreds by strong winds. One told state media as he battled down the mountain he saw many people lying on the ground, some he believed to be dead. Gansu province is often subject to extreme weather conditions including sandstorms and earthquakes. The Gansu Meteorological Bureau had warned of “sudden heavy showers, hail, lightning, sudden gale-force winds” and other adverse weather conditions across the province in a report dated Friday. Victims included elite Chinese long-distance runners Liang Jing and Huang Guanjun, local media reported. Liang had won multiple Chinese ultramarathons in recent years while Huang won the men’s hearing-impaired marathon at the 2019 National Paralympic Games. Fury mounted on Chinese social media after the disaster, with many users blaming organizers for poor contingency planning. More than 84 million viewed the hashtag “Is the Gansu marathon accident natural or man-made?” while 130 million scoured a thread around safety concerns for marathons and cross-county races. “This is purely a man-made disaster,” wrote one. China’s top sports governing body has issued instructions to the country’s sports system to improve safety management in sports events. The previous management model for safety in races “had some problems and deficiencies,” the sports administration said in a readout published Monday, and said all organizations would now have to set up detailed contingency plans and a mechanism to halt the event quickly if needed. 
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India is nearing 300,000 recorded deaths from the coronavirus, after adding more than 3,700 deaths in the last 24 hours.
 
The country reported more than 240,000 new infections Sunday – a number that many believe is an undercount because of limited testing resources.
 
The Indian government said Saturday that while COVID-19 infections remain high as they spread to overburdened rural areas, the infections are stabilizing in some parts of the country.
 
While a new variant of the virus first found in India has raised alarm around the world, a new study found Saturday that vaccines by Pfizer and AstraZeneca are effective against it after two doses.
 
The study by Public Health England found that Pfizer’s vaccine is 88% effective against B.1.617.2, or the Indian variant, and 93% effective against B.1.1.7, now known as the Kent variant. AstraZeneca’s vaccine is 60% effective against the Indian variant and 66% effective against the English variant.
 
In both cases, the effectiveness was measured two weeks after the second shot and against symptomatic disease. Both vaccines had limited effectiveness after just one dose.  
 
The Kent variant is the dominant strain in England, but health officials fear the Indian strain may outpace it.
 
On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal reported that three scientists from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, or WIV, in Wuhan, China were admitted to the hospital in November 2019 – a month before China confirmed its first coronavirus case.
 
The news, which cites a U.S. intelligence report, came a day before the decision-making body of the World Health Organization is scheduled to meet to discuss the pandemic and will likely add fuel to the theory that the virus may have escaped the laboratory.  
 
The report is not the first to cite the possibility that China had earlier knowledge of the virus. Near the end of the Trump administration, a fact sheet released by the State Department said that “the U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses.”
 
The World Health Assembly will begin Monday and last until June 1. 
 
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