Delhi running out of space to cremate Covid dead

Officials in Delhi have been urged to find more sites for cremations as the city's morgues and crematoriums are overwhelmed by masses of Covid deaths.

A second wave of the virus is ravaging parts of India, with 386,452 new cases reported on Thursday - the biggest one-day increase on record for any country.

There were another 3,500 deaths nationwide on Thursday and nearly 400 in Delhi - a record for the capital.

The total number of infections in the country has now passed 18 million.

The first consignment of emergency medical supplies from the US arrived in India in Friday, part of what the White House has said will be more than $100 million worth of support.

But oxygen supplies and hospital beds remain in desperately short supply across the country and relatives of Covid patients continue to plead on social media for help.

One senior Delhi police officer said that people were having to cremate family members in crematoriums not designated to take victims of Covid-19.

"That's why we suggested more crematoriums should be set up," the officer told the NDTV news channel.

India's central government is facing mounting criticism over its handling of the pandemic and its decision to allow large election rallies and religious festivals to go ahead in recent weeks.

The health minister defended the government on Thursday, saying the country's fatality rate was the lowest in the world and that oxygen supplies were "adequate".

Harsh Vardhan told ANI news agency that oxygen was now "being made available from many sources" including those from abroad, and that storage and cryogenic tankers were also being prepared.

A US military plane landed in New Delhi on Friday morning, loaded with almost one million rapid Covid tests and 100,000 N95 masks.

Jeremy Konyndyk, the executive director of the Covid task force at the US Agency for International Development, told AFP news agency that their first priority was to address India's most "immediate needs".

"We also need to support them to address some of the underlying challenges, which is really about the volume of medical-grade oxygen that the country can produce," he said.

On Saturday, all adults above the age of 18 in India will become eligible for vaccination, but there are widespread concerns about the availability of shots. India is the world's biggest producer of vaccines but does not have enough stock for the estimated 800 million people who will become eligible.

A number of states are reporting shortages of the vaccine. India's financial capital, Mumbai, home to more than 20 million people, has suspended its vaccination drive for three days due to "depletion of available vaccines", the civic body said in a statement.

The municipal commissioner of Mumbai, Ashwini Bhide, said on Twitter that the city would reserve current stocks for people aged over 45 years old.

Dozens killed at Lag B'Omer religious festival

At least 44 people have been killed in a crush at a crowded religious festival in the north-east of Israel.

Dozens more were injured at the Lag B'Omer festival, which takes place annually at the foot of Mount Meron.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described it as a "heavy disaster" and said he was praying for the casualties.

Tens of thousands of Orthodox Jews attended the festival, making it the largest event in Israel since the coronavirus pandemic began.

The country's successful vaccination programme has allowed it to lift many restrictions, but health officials had still warned of the risk of Covid-19.

Early reports suggested a structure at the site had collapsed, but emergency officials later said a crush had occurred at around 01:00 local time (22:00 GMT Thursday).

Police sources told Haaretz newspaper that it started after some attendees slipped on steps, which caused dozens more to fall.

"It happened in a split second; people just fell, trampling each other. It was a disaster," one witness told the newspaper.

Videos posted online show thousands of people struggling to flee the chaos through a narrow passageway as the incident unfolded.

One pilgrim said he thought there was a bomb alert when loudhailer messages urged the crowds to disperse. Police then requested the evacuation of the site.

"No-one imagined that this could happen here," he told Channel 12 TV. "Rejoicing became mourning, a great light became a deep darkness."

Dozens of ambulances attended the scene and emergency services laid out bodies under foil covers on the ground. Helicopters took the injured to hospital, while the military said search-and-rescue troops were also deployed.

At least 103 people were injured, officials said, including 38 people who were in critical condition at the site.

"MDA is fighting for the lives of dozens wounded, and will not give up until the last victim is evacuated," a tweet from the national emergency service Magen David Adom (MDA) said.

Earlier in the day, officials said they were not able to enforce coronavirus restrictions at the site due to the huge crowds.

Police reportedly said they had arrested two people for disrupting their efforts to keep order before the crush occurred.

'No place to move'

Witnesses have described the panic as the crush began to unfold.

"It was crowded and there [was]... no place to move," one attendee told the BBC. "People started to fall on the ground."

"All of a sudden we saw paramedics... running by," another attendee, Shlomo Katz, said. "One after the other [they] started coming out... Then we understood that something is going on here."

"Over 1,000 people together tried to go down a very, very small place, very narrow road and they just fell on top of each other," said Yanki Farber, a reporter with the Orthodox Jewish website Behadrei Haredim.

One emergency worker, Dov Maisel, told the BBC: "We just finished treating one of Israel's worst disasters."

"A terrible disaster of people who came to celebrate... and unfortunately were literally crushed to death," he said.

What is the Lag B'Omer festival?

Tens of thousands of Orthodox Jews make a pilgrimage to Meron each year for Lag B'Omer, a religious holiday marked with all-night bonfires, prayer and dancing.

The town is the site of the tomb of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, a revered second-century sage, who ordained that the anniversary of his death be commemorated with a rejoicing of his life.

According to the Times of Israel, organisers estimated that 100,000 people arrived on Thursday night, with more due on Friday.

The attendance at the event was higher than it was last year, when the festival was held under restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic.

But it was still smaller than in previous years when hundreds of thousands of people gathered at the site.

Why India's Covid crisis matters to the whole world

A nightmare on repeat - India is running out of oxygen again

Twenty-five families in India's capital Delhi woke up to the news on Friday morning that someone they loved had died in the city's Sir Ganga Ram hospital, reportedly because coronavirus patients could not get enough oxygen.

The hospital's medical director said a severe shortfall had slowed the flow of oxygen to 25 of the sickest patients, who needed a high pressure, stable supply.

The tragedy came at the end of a week where several major hospitals in Delhi have repeatedly come close to running out of oxygen, which can help patients with the virus who need support with their breathing stay alive.

On Tuesday, it took a desperate public plea from the chief minister and an intervention from the high court for the Indian central government to organise a late night refill.

An oxygen tanker eventually arrived at Sir Ganga Ram hospital on Friday morning, shortly after a dire warning that 60 more patients were on the verge of death.

But India's rising wave of cases is pushing its healthcare system to the brink - from the country's richest cities to its remotest corners.

A battle for breath

Maharashtra and Gujarat in the west, Haryana in the north, and Madhya Pradesh in central India are all facing an oxygen shortage.

In the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, some hospitals have put "oxygen out of stock" boards outside, and in the state capital Lucknow hospitals have asked patients to move elsewhere.

Smaller hospitals and nursing homes in Delhi are doing the same. Desperate relatives in several cities are lining up outside oxygen refilling centres. One plant in the southern city of Hyderabad hired bouncers to manage the crowd.

Many stricken with coronavirus are dying while they wait. Hospitals are struggling to accommodate breathless patients, or even keep alive those who were lucky enough to find a bed. Social media feeds and WhatsApp groups are full of frantic pleas for oxygen cylinders.

For a week, India has been reliving this nightmare on repeat, waiting for the terrifying moment when there is no oxygen left at all.

For anyone who has watched the pandemic unfold here - from doctors to officials to journalists - this feels like déjà vu. Seven months ago, the country had grappled with a similar oxygen shortage amid a rapid surge in case numbers. But this time, it's much worse.

Typically, healthcare facilities consume about 15% of oxygen supply, leaving the rest for industrial use. But amid India's second wave nearly 90% of the country's oxygen supply - 7,500 metric tonnes daily - is being diverted for medical use, according to Rajesh Bhushan, a senior health official.

That's nearly three times higher than was consumed every day at the peak of the first wave in mid-September last year.

Then, India was adding about 90,000 cases daily. Just two weeks ago, in early April, the single-day spike was around 144,000. Now, the daily caseload has more than doubled to well more than 300,000.

"The situation is so bad that we had to treat some patients in a cardiac ambulance for 12 hours until they could get an ICU bed," said Dr Siddheshwar Shinde, who runs a Covid hospital in Pune, a western district with India's second-highest active caseload and third-highest death toll from the virus.

Last week, when there were no ventilators left, Dr Shinde began moving patients to other cities - unheard of in Pune, where patients usually arrive from nearby districts seeking treatment.

The state of Maharashtra, where Pune is located, is among the worst-affected parts of India, and currently accounts for more than a third of active cases. The state is producing about 1,200 metric tonnes of oxygen daily but all of it is already being used for Covid patients.

And demand is rising along with cases, and outstripping supply. It shows no signs of letting up.

"Usually hospitals like ours were able to have enough oxygen supply. But in the past fortnight, keeping people breathing has become a task. Patients as young as 22 need oxygen support," said Dr Shinde.

Doctors and epidemiologists believe the deluge of cases is delaying tests and consultation, leading to many people being admitted to hospital when their condition is severe. So the demand for high-flow oxygen - and therefore more oxygen - is higher than it was during the last wave.

"Nobody knows when this is going to end," Dr Shinde said. "I think even the government did not foresee this."

A scramble to find supply

Some governments did. The southern state of Kerala increased supply by monitoring demand closely and planning for a rise in cases. Kerala now has surplus oxygen that it is sending to other states.

But Delhi and some other states do not have their own oxygen plants and are relying on imports.

The Supreme Court has weighed in, asking Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration for a national Covid plan that addresses the oxygen crunch.

The federal health ministry had invited bids for new oxygen plants in October last year - more than eight months after the beginning of pandemic in India. Of the 162 that were sanctioned, only 33 have been installed so far - 59 will be installed by the end of April and another 80 by the end of May, the ministry has said.

The scramble to increase supply points to the lack of any emergency plan.

Liquid oxygen, pale blue and extremely cold, with a temperature of around -183C, is a cryogenic gas that can only be stored and transported in special cylinders and tankers.

About 500 factories in India extract and purify oxygen from air and send it to hospitals in liquid form. Most of it is supplied through tankers.

Major hospitals usually have their own tank where oxygen is stored and then piped directly to beds. Smaller and temporary hospitals rely on steel and aluminium cylinders.

Oxygen tankers often queue outside a plant for hours and it takes about two hours to fill one tanker. It takes several hours more for these tankers to travel to various towns within or across states.

The tankers also have to follow a specific speed limit - no more than 25mph (40km/h) - and they often don't travel in the night to avoid accidents.

The head of one of India's biggest oxygen suppliers has said part of the struggle has been getting oxygen from eastern India, where supply in industrial states such as Orissa and Jharkhand is high, to western or northern India such as Maharashtra or Delhi, where cases are rising fast.

And the demand for oxygen at individual facilities is unpredictable, making it difficult to gauge a hospital's requirement and adequately get supply where it is needed.

Not every patient needs the same amount of oxygen for the same duration. How many patients need oxygen changes by hour in a hospital," said Dr Om Shrivastav, an infectious diseases expert at a Mumbai hospital.

"We are taking all the care we can. But I've not seen anything like this. I think nobody here has."

Too little, too late

Before the crunch of the oxygen crisis, the federal government was already facing criticism for allowing election rallies and a massive Hindu festival, and failing to expand the vaccination drive quickly enough. Critics have accused various state governments of doing too little to prepare for the devastating second wave now washing through the county.

Doctors and virologists who spoke to the BBC said the oxygen shortfall was more a symptom than a cause of the crisis - effective safety protocols and strong public messaging could have kept more people at home, and the virus at bay.

But a sharp drop in cases by January lulled the country into a false sense of safety, they said, creating the conditions for a terrible second wave.

Mr Modi's government has now started an "oxygen express", with trains carrying tankers to wherever there is demand, and the Indian Air Force is airlifting oxygen from military bases. They are also mulling plans to import 50,000 metric tonnes of of liquid oxygen.

"We have been telling authorities that we are willing to increase our capacity, but we need financial aid for that," said Rajabhau Shinde, who runs a small oxygen plant in Maharashtra.

"Nobody said anything and now suddenly, hospitals and doctors are pleading for more cylinders," he said.

"This should not have happened. As the saying goes, dig the well before you're thirsty. But we didn't do that."

Daunte Wright: New bodycam footage shows arrest and shooting

A police body camera captured the fatal traffic stop where 20-year-old Daunte Wright was shot and killed by police.

This video contains upsetting scenes but we have chosen not to show the moment Mr Wright was shot. Fatally wounded, he crashed a few blocks away.

The incident has sparked protests in Minnesota. Police Chief Tim Gannon said he believed the shooting was accidental.

New Christ statue in Brazil's Encantado to be taller than Rio's

A new statue of Christ being built in Brazil will be taller than the famous Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro.

Christ the Protector in the southern city of Encantado will be 43m (140 ft) high with its pedestal, making it the world's third tallest Jesus statue.

A head and outstretched arms were added to the structure last week, which was begun in 2019.

The idea came from local politician Adroaldo Conzatti, who died in March with Covid-19.

The $350,000 (£255,000) project is expected to be completed later in the year, the Association of the Friends of Christ group which is organising it says.

It is being funded by donations from individuals and companies, the association adds.

The statue is 36m from hand to hand. An internal lift will take tourists to a viewpoint in the chest region, 40m up.

Only the Jesus Buntu Burake statue in Sulawesi, Indonesia, at 52.55m including its pedestal, and Christ the King in Swiebodzin, Poland, which is 52.5m high including its mound, are taller.

They would tower over Rio's iconic Christ the Redeemer, at 38m.

There are, however, dozens of other statues worldwide that are taller, including several of the Virgin Mary and numerous Buddhas.

DMX, American rapper and actor, dies aged 50

US rapper and actor DMX has died at the age of 50, five days after suffering a heart attack.

The performer, whose real name was Earl Simmons, had been placed on life support and died with his family by his side.

In a statement, his family said he was "a warrior who fought till the very end".

"Earl's music inspired countless fans across the world and his iconic legacy will live on forever," they said.

DMX, aka Dark Man X, was a leading hip-hop performer who collaborated with such artists as JAY-Z, Ja Rule and LL Cool J.

He took his moniker from the name of a drum machine used in rap tracks.

The chart-topping artist's songs included Party Up (Up in Here) and X Gon' Give It To Ya.

He also acted on screen, appearing in such films as Cradle 2 the Grave, Romeo Must Die and Exit Wounds.

Born in Mount Vernon, New York in 1970, DMX publicly battled substance abuse for years and spent several periods in rehab.

A father of 15, he served jail sentences on charges including animal cruelty, reckless driving, drug possession and weapons possession.

According to his family, DMX died on Friday at White Plains Hospital in White Plains, New York.

"He loved his family with all of his heart and we cherish the times we spent with him," their statement continued.

"We appreciate all of the love and support during this incredibly difficult time.

"Please respect our privacy as we grieve the loss of our brother, father, uncle and the man the world knew as DMX."

His manager Steve Rifkind also paid his respects, writing on Instagram: "The team is going to finish what we started and your legacy will never go away.

"That's my word. Rest Easy X".

Tributes were paid throughout Friday, with a host of stars expressing their admiration for the musician and offering sympathies to his family.

"His gift meant so much to so many," tweeted actress Halle Berry.

Rappers Ice Cube, Soulja Boy and Chance the Rapper also tweeted their condolences.

"RIP DMX. I pray for the comfort of your children and loved ones," the Oscar-winning actress Viola Davis wrote on Twitter.

"You TOUCHED so many through your MUSIC", the American rapper and singer Missy Elliott said.

Other musicians, including Burna Boy, Chance the Rapper and Charlie Puth, also shared tributes to the artist, along with basketball stars LeBron James and Shaquille O'Neal.

Congressman Jamaal Bowman, who represents the rapper's hometown in Washington, tweeted that he was "sending love, strength, and healing to DMX's family".