On COVID, India and privilege

[AFP/ Arun Sankar]

By Samantha Grasso,

India’s devastating second wave of COVID-19 is seeing hundreds of thousands of new infections every day and a daily death toll of thousands.

Barkha Dutt, founding editor of Mojo Story and a columnist for The Washington Post, reported the story across various COVID epicenters in India and found a recurring theme of government failure. Last month she told AJ+ Executive Producer Sakhr Al-Makhadhi that the government was “too quick to declare victory against the first wave of the pandemic,” lacked a contingency plan for a second wave and obstructed its own vaccine production and distribution plans.

The story was also intensely personal for her. “I lost my father to COVID, but this was despite my privilege,” Dutt said. “This was despite the fact that I have access to resources, that I can pay for private hospitals.” Here are some of the takeaways from their conversation.

‘People are gasping for breath’

Dutt said doctors have told her that they’ve had to change treatments for patients because they don’t have high-flow cannulas to deliver more oxygen to patients. In many cases, hospitals are having to turn away patients and reduce the amount of oxygen they give to those they do treat. She saw 25 people die overnight in two different hospitals in New Delhi because those facilities lacked oxygen supplies.

“Outside the hospital gates in India, people are gasping for breath. The hospitals either don't have beds, and if they have beds, they don't have the oxygen that is needed to treat those patients,” Dutt said. “[A] doctor told me that when someone dies because you don't have enough oxygen, that's not dying from COVID. That's murder.”

‘Becoming the story that I was reporting’

Because of the pandemic’s crunch on the hospital system, Dutt’s family organized a private ambulance to take her father to the hospital because they thought a hospital ambulance would take too long. When it arrived, they discovered the ambulance was only a repurposed van with a flat seat and one oxygen cylinder in the back.

“I'll always be haunted about whether I took the right decision, but I thought it was more important, even if he was a little uncomfortable, to get him to the hospital on time,” she said.

Though the driver assured Dutt that the oxygen cylinder worked, it wasn’t until they arrived at the general ward an hour later, their journey bogged by traffic, that doctors said the cylinder lacked the proper high-flow mask to administer the oxygen to him. As a result, his oxygen level had fallen and he had to be taken to the ICU and placed on a ventilator.

“And then I knew in my heart that he would never make it,” Dutt said. “And so, in some ways, I call it becoming the story that I was reporting.”

Even space at cremation and burial grounds had become scarce. When her family went to cremate him, a fight broke out between families, and the police had to intervene.

‘My father lost his fight, but he had a chance’

“Despite how gutted I am at his loss, the fact is that I was able to give him the chance at a hospital, the chance at medical intervention. What I'm seeing happening outside the gates at most hospitals in India is just notices saying the gates are shut at emergency wards, especially in [New Delhi],” Dutt said. “My father lost his fight, but he had a chance. Most Indians aren't even getting that chance. And that's why I think it's important to tell his story, to juxtapose it with those who are not even getting a chance.”

Watch Sakhr Al-Makhadhi’s video about India’s COVID crisis with Dutt here.

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