India on Saturday recorded for the first time over 400,000 new Covid-19 infections that health experts say portend greater pressure on healthcare systems already overwhelmed by patients and more daily deaths in the weeks to come.

The 401,993 new lab-confirmed cases detected over the previous 24 hours have raised the number of active patients to over 3.26 million, or thrice the peak count of active patients during the previous wave last September.

Health authorities also documented 3,523 Covid-19 deaths — about 146 deaths every hour — through Friday and up to 8am on Saturday, raising the death toll to 211,853, the fourth highest in the world after 576,000 in the US, 404,000 in Brazil and 217,000 in Mexico.

An infectious disease specialist said the overnight addition of 400,000-plus cases could translate into an extra demand for 40,000 hospital beds in the coming days, assuming 10 per cent of patients advance into moderate or severe disease that requires hospital care.

At the current scale of the epidemic, even if only 5 per cent of the patients need oxygen, the demand for oxygen-supported beds would increase by 20,000 every day across the country, said another physician.

While hospitals in several cities, including Delhi, have reported oxygen shortages amid the influx of patients, doctors say the demand for oxygen is also likely to rise in smaller towns with weaker health infrastructure if the epidemic grows in these places.

“The capacity to detect falling oxygen levels in patients early in rural areas and to initiate oxygen therapy will be critical,” said Oommen John, a physician and research fellow with The George Institute for Global Health, New Delhi, an independent research organisation.

The infectious disease specialist said the daily death counts could rise in the coming days as there was usually a two-to-three-week lag between cohorts of new cases and deaths among them.

Vaccines

The Centre has allocated 16.25 million Covishield doses and 5 million Covaxin doses to the states till May 15, free of cost under the “Government of India” channel, to be used on people aged 45 or older.

Bengal will receive 995,300 Covishield doses and 327,980 Covaxin doses, the Union health ministry said, releasing the allocations to each state over the next fortnight.

About 150,000 doses of Russia’s Sputnik V, the third Covid-19 vaccine approved for use in India, arrived in the country on Saturday, the Hyderabad-based Dr Reddy’s Laboratories announced.

Under the campaign’s new phase that started on Saturday, states and private hospitals may inoculate people aged between 18 and 45 years by procuring doses on their own from vaccine makers.