April 28, 2021

India has suffered its worst day yet of the pandemic, as both new Covid-19 cases and deaths break previous records and crematoriums in Delhi become so overloaded with bodies that they are being forced to build makeshift funeral pyres on spare patches of land.

On Wednesday morning, India reported 360,960 new cases in the previous 24 hours, the largest single-day increase in the world, taking India’s total to nearly 18 million. A further 3,293 deaths, the deadliest day so far, took the death toll to 201,187.

Dellhi is under lockdown until at least next week but deaths in the capital continue to climb in record numbers, with another 381 succumbing to Covid-19 on Tuesday. The city’s crematoriums and graveyards struggled to cope with the sheer number of bodies, running out of both space and wood for funeral pyres. Relatives of the dead sat with bodies for up 20 hours outside some crematoriums waiting to perform the last rites on their loved ones.

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