The giant city predicted to emerge as the newest coronavirus epicentre

While Mumbai surpassed the grim landmark of 50,000 coronavirus cases this week, attention has turned to India’s capital city as cases across the country continue to grow exponentially.

Infections in Delhi, which has an official population of 19.6 million, are expected to climb to more than half a million by the end of July and it does not have the hospital capacity to handle such an outbreak, the city state's deputy chief minister said on Tuesday.

The warning came as harrowing accounts of people struggling to get a hospital bed in the Indian capital emerged, including some who said their loved ones died on the doorsteps of medical centres which refused to take them in.

Several of the city’s outer suburbs are not included in the official population count and there are reports that the actual population could be as high as 30 million.

Despite a vast lockdown of its 1.3 billion people imposed in March, the disease is spreading in India at one of the world's fastest rates as it re-opens a battered economy.

The caseload stood at 276,583, the world's fifth largest and is set to overtake the United Kingdom in the next few days.

Delhi has nearly 29,000 cases that will grow to 550,000 by the end of July, deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia told reporters.

By then it will need 80,000 beds compared with its current capacity of nearly 9000.

"For Delhi this is a big problem, if cases continue to rise," he said.

Epidemiologist Professor Raina MacIntyre, from the University of NSW, previously told Yahoo News Australia cities such as Delhi and Mumbai, which have large swathes of poor, high-density areas, have proven disastrous for the spread of the virus.

“Countries that are seeing a rising trend need to review each of the pillars of disease control and also look at urban slums in megacities. These could be hot spots for transmission, where social distancing is not possible due to crowded conditions,” she said.

“The reported number of cases in many low income countries may be the tip of the iceberg.”

‘Broken’ health system not ready for surge in cases

Already the crisis is putting pressure on India’s health system.

Aniket Goyal, a Delhi university student, said his grandfather was refused admission in six government-run hospitals last week because they said they had no beds even though a government app showed that beds were available.

When he went to the city's private health care facilities, they found the daily cost of treatment so high, they withdrew. The family filed a public interest petition in court seeking its intervention. The court set a hearing for the following week by which time the 78-year-old man had died.

"He was dying in front of our family every minute, we could not do anything," Goyal said.

Another resident tweeted she was standing outside the government-run Lok Nayak Jayaprakash hospital with her ailing father, but the hospital did not accept him.

"My dad is having high fever. We need to shift him to hospital. I am standing outside LNJP Delhi and they are not taking him in. He is having corona, high fever and breathing problem. He won't survive without help. Pls help," said the resident, who tweeted under the Twitter handle Amarpreet.

An hour later she wrote her father had died and that the government had failed them. The hospital said in a statement that the patient was dead on arrival and that its doctors had examined him.

"The hospital staff is working non-stop for the last several months and are making every effort possible to ensure not a single life is lost," it said adding these were extraordinary circumstances.

A Delhi government coronavirus mobile app showed the city of more than 20 million people had 8,814 COVID-19 beds, with more than half occupied. Of the 96 hospitals listed, 20 had no beds available, the app showed on Tuesday.

The app also tracks the availability of ventilators, and data showed that only 260 of the 519 ventilators were in use.

"Delhi's health system is broken," said Congress MP Manish Tewari.

with Reuters

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