NEW DELHI: More emergency medical aid from foreign donors to alleviate a dire oxygen shortage arrived in India on Sunday, as Covid-19 deaths in the South Asian nation rose to a new record.
India is setting almost-daily records for new infections and deaths as the virus crisis engulfs overstretched hospitals in cities and spreads into rural regions.
The country of 1.3 billion reported 3,689 deaths on Sunday — the highest single-day rise yet in the pandemic, to take the overall toll to more than 215,000.
Just under 400,000 infections were added, bringing the total number of cases past 19.5 million.
The latest figures came as medical equipment, including oxygen-generation plants, was flown into the capital New Delhi from France and Germany as part of a huge international effort.
“We are here because we are bringing help that... will save lives,” Germany’s ambassador to India, Walter J. Lindner, said as 120 ventilators arrived late Saturday.
“Out there the hospitals are full. People are sometimes dying in front of the hospitals. They have no more oxygen. Sometimes (they are dying) in their cars.”
French ambassador Emmanuel Lenain said his country wanted to show solidarity with India.
“The epidemic is still going on in one country. The world won’t be safe until we are all safe. So it’s a matter of urgency,” he said early Sunday following the delivery of eight oxygen-generation plants and dozens of ventilators from France.
India’s eastern state of Odisha on Sunday became the latest region to order a lockdown to slow the spread of the pathogen.
The nation’s worst-hit city, Delhi, reported just over 25,000 cases on Saturday as it extended its own lockdown by another week.
Hospitals in the capital continued to issue SOS calls for oxygen on social media, with the latest appeal posted by a children’s hospital on Twitter on Sunday.
The plea came a day after up to a dozen patients died at a Delhi hospital amid an oxygen shortage, local media reported.
There are also growing fears about the surge of the virus in small cities, towns and rural regions where health infrastructure is already patchy and limited.
India on Saturday opened up its inoculation drive to all adults, but supplies are running low and only online enrolments are allowed for those aged under 45.
“It is a necessity now. We are seeing so many people testing positive,” data scientist Megha Srivastava, 35, told AFP outside a Delhi vaccination center as she waited for her shot.
The head of the world’s largest vaccine maker, Serum Institute chief Adar Poonawalla, told The Times newspaper on Saturday during a business trip to Britain that he was being hounded by political and business leaders for more supplies.
“’Threats’ is an understatement,” he told the paper. “The level of expectation and aggression is really unprecedented. It’s overwhelming. Everyone feels they should get the vaccine.”
Experts have called on the government to allow more flexibility in India’s vaccine rollout, particularly in poorer rural areas where there is lower Internet penetration.
“We should procure sufficient vaccines, then plan bottom-up through... the primary health center level,” Bangalore-based public health expert Hemant Shewade told AFP.
“Take vaccines to the people the way we have implemented our polio and measles campaigns.”
Alarm bells are also ringing in other countries in densely populated South Asia.
“Infections have surged beyond the capacity of the health system,” Nepal’s health ministry said Friday as it warned that hospital beds were running out amid a spike in infections.
On Saturday, the Himalayan nation recorded 5,706 new cases, just shy of a pandemic high of 5,743 in October.
Nearly 40 percent of people tested returned a positive result, data from the ministry showed.
The government has enforced lockdowns or partial lockdowns in almost half of Nepal’s 77 districts.
In Sri Lanka, daily infections hit a record 1,699 on Saturday, with authorities imposing further curbs on movement and activities in parts of the island nation.
“We could face an India-type crisis very soon unless we arrest the current trend of infections,” chief epidemiologist Sudath Samaraweera said.
Lifesaving oxygen aid arrives in India as death toll hits new record
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Lifesaving oxygen aid arrives in India as death toll hits new record
Supreme Court ruling offers little relief for Republicans divided on Trump’s tariffs
- “I have the right to do tariffs, and I’ve always had the right to do tariffs,” Trump said at a news conference, adding that he doesn’t need Congress
WASHINGTON: For a few hours on Friday, congressional Republicans seemed to get some relief from one of the largest points of friction they have had with the Trump administration. It didn’t last.
The Supreme Court struck down a significant portion of President Donald Trump’s global tariff regime, ruling that the power to impose taxes lies with Congress. Many Republicans greeted the Friday morning decision with measured statements, some even praising it, and party leaders said they would work with Trump on tariffs going forward.
But by the afternoon, Trump made clear he had no intention of working with Congress and would instead go it alone by imposing a new global 10 percent import tax. On Saturday morning, he went further by saying he would raise that new tariff to 15 percent.
He’s doing so under a law that restricts the tariffs to 150 days and has never been invoked this way before. His decision could not only have major implications for the global economy, but also ensure that Republicans will have to keep answering for Trump’s tariffs for months to come, especially as the midterm elections near.
“I have the right to do tariffs, and I’ve always had the right to do tariffs,” Trump said at a news conference, adding that he doesn’t need Congress.
Tariffs have been one of the only areas where the Republican-controlled Congress has broken with Trump. Both the House and Senate at various points have passed resolutions intended to rebuke the tariffs being imposed on trade partners like Canada.
It’s the rare issue where Republican lawmakers who came of age in a party that largely championed free trade have voiced criticism of Trump’s economic policies.
“The empty merits of sweeping trade wars with America’s friends were evident long before today’s decision,” Sen. Mitch McConnell, the former longtime Senate Republican leader, said in a statement, adding that tariffs raise the prices of houses and disrupt other industries important to his home state of Kentucky.
At least one Republican congressman who last week voted against Trump’s tariffs on Canada is now facing political consequences. Trump on Saturday posted on his Truth Social platform that he was rescinding his endorsement of Colorado Rep. Jeff Hurd for reelection over his lack of support for tariffs and instead supporting Hurd’s Republican primary competitor, Hope Scheppelman.
“Congressman Hurd is one of a small number of Legislators who have let me and our Country down,” Trump wrote. “He is more interested in protecting Foreign Countries that have been ripping us off for decades than he is the United States of America.”
How Democrats plan to leverage Trump’s trade war
Democrats, looking to win back control of Congress, intend to make McConnell’s point their own. At a news conference Friday, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Trump’s new tariffs “will still raise people’s costs and they will hurt the American people as much as his old tariffs did.”
Schumer challenged Republicans to stop Trump from imposing his new global tariff. Democrats on Friday also called for refunds to be sent to US consumers for the tariffs struck down by the Supreme Court.
“The American people paid for these tariffs and the American people should get their money back,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said on social media.
It all played into one of the Democrats’ central messages for the midterm campaign: that Trump has failed to make the cost of living more affordable and has inflamed prices with tariffs.
Midsize US businesses have had to absorb the import taxes by passing them along to customers in the form of higher prices, employing fewer workers or accepting lower profits, according to an analysis by the JPMorganChase Institute.
Will Congress act on Trump’s new tariffs?
The Supreme Court decision on Friday made it clear that a majority of justices believe that Congress alone is granted authority under the Constitution to levy tariffs. Yet Trump quickly signed an executive order citing the Trade Act of 1974, which grants the president the power to impose temporary import taxes when there are “large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits” or other international payment problems. The authority has never been used and therefore never tested in court.
Republicans at times have warned Trump about the potential economic fallout of his tariff plans. Yet before Trump’s “Liberation Day” of global tariffs in April last year, Republican leaders declined to directly defy the president.
Some GOP lawmakers cheered on the new tariff policy, highlighting a generational divide among Republicans, with a mostly younger group of Republicans fiercely backing Trump’s strategy. Rather than adhering to traditional free trade doctrine, they advocate for “America First” protectionism, hoping it will revive US manufacturing.
Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno, an Ohio freshman, slammed the Supreme Court’s ruling on Friday and called for GOP lawmakers to “codify the tariffs that had made our country the hottest country on earth!”
A few Republican opponents of the tariffs, meanwhile, openly cheered the Supreme Court’s decision. Rep. Don Bacon, a critic of the administration who is not seeking reelection, said on social media that “Congress must stand on its own two feet, take tough votes and defend its authorities.”
Bacon predicted there would be more Republican pushback coming. He and a handful of other GOP members were instrumental earlier this month in forcing a House vote on Trump’s tariffs on Canada. As that measure passed, Trump vowed political retribution for any Republican who voted to oppose his tariff plans.
