‘The system has collapsed’: India’s descent into Covid hell

Many falsely believed that the country had defeated Covid. Now hospitals are running out of oxygen and bodies are stacking up in morgues

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Looking out over a sea of jostling, maskless faces gathered at a political rally in West Bengal on Saturday, the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, proudly proclaimed that he had never ever seen such huge crowds". A mask was also noticeably absent from Modi's face.

That same day, India registered a record-breaking 234,000 new coronavirus cases and 1,341 deaths - and the numbers have kept rising since.