NEW DELHI, India (NBC) – India’s second wave of the coronavirus has not only created shortages of oxygen, medicine and hospital beds, but also of wood and space and wood needed for funeral pyres and space for crematorium slots. This is forcing some to pay exorbitant amounts to perform the last rites of loved ones.
India is reporting by far the highest number of new daily cases globally at over 4,000. The figures are almost certainly under-reported, according to experts.
India’s Hindu majority cremates its dead, and the huge numbers of deaths are creating backlogs at cremation grounds and shortages of manpower and raw materials.
Two firewood sellers in Satara, a city in Western India, told local news outlets that prices have doubled in some areas.
For COVID patients who manage to survive, black marketing of medical supplies is rampant, with desperate relatives paying huge sums in what is still a low-income country.
In the capital of New Delhi, oxygen cylinders are being sold for as much as $955, twenty times the usual price and many times the monthly salary of the average Indian.
Police there have made more than 100 arrests in cases connected with overcharging, including for drugs, ambulance services and hospital beds.
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