May 7 (UPI) — Indian congressional leader Rahul Gandhi told Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday that the government’s lack of a clear COVID-19 mitigation and vaccination strategy “has placed India in a highly dangerous position.”
India has seen a dramatic wave of cases and deaths since the middle of March. More than 800,000 new cases have been reported in the last two days alone — as another 414,000 were recorded for Thursday, a new daily record.
In a letter to Modi on Friday, Gandhi wrote that a national lockdown is now “almost inevitable as the [COVID-19] tsunami continues to ravage the country unabated.”
“In such an unprecedented crisis, the people of India must be your foremost priority. I urge you to do everything in your power to stop the needless suffering that our people are going through,” Gandhi wrote, according to India Today.
Indian National Congress Party President Rahul Gandhi called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take steps to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic. File Photo by Rajat Gupta/EPA-EFE
Gandhi, the top opposition leader in India’s National Congress and son of former India Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, requested that Modi rapidly vaccinate the entire population and take measures to prevent coronavirus variants from spreading.
India began its vaccination campaign in January, but it’s been stalled by a shortage of doses.
“Your government’s lack of a clear and coherent [COVID-19] and vaccination strategy, as well as its hubris in declaring premature victory as the virus was exponentially spreading, has placed India in a highly dangerous position,” he wrote in the letter. “The disease is growing explosively. It is currently on the verge of overwhelming all of our systems.”
He added that the government must act with compassion and provide money and food to the most vulnerable.
“India is home to one out of every six human beings… pandemic has demonstrated that our size, genetic diversity and complexity make India a fertile ground for the virus to rapidly mutate, transforming itself into a more contagious and more dangerous form,” he added.
India’s government has been criticized for not providing enough medical oxygen and infrastructure to hospitals. Some patients have died in ambulances and parked cars waiting for beds and oxygen.
Critics have complained that some of the shortages are political, arguing that areas controlled by Modi’s party have been given greater priority in deliveries.
The Delhi High Court on Thursday ordered the New Delhi government to provide additional medical treatment space for patients, calling the city’s existing infrastructure “exposed” and in “shambles.”
A ban on most travel from India to the United States began on Tuesday due to the surge in cases.(function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(d.getElementById(id))return;js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=’https://embed.ex.co/sdk.js’;fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}(document,’script’,’exco-sdk’));
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