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'So many bodies,' says ambulance driver as India struggles to stem COVID-19 deaths
India is seeing new coronavirus cases and deaths daily, but businesses have begun to reopen.
By SREYA BANERJEE
Friday, September 25, 2020 5:22PM
With the windows of his ambulance rolled down and the siren blaring, Mohsin Khan, 41, told his attendant why he drives ambulances.
"I lost my mother because no ambulance came on time to attend to her," he said. "The helplessness I felt, I don't wish that on my worst enemy."
On COVID-19 duty since the beginning of the pandemic in India, Khan has seen and done it all: from rushing patients to hospitals across Delhi to being the sole witness to last rites being performed. But this particular trip to the cremation ground brought him a sense of complete helplessness, as it involved him shifting the body of a 3-year-old COVID-19 victim, the youngest he has ever carried.
"She just reminds me of my daughter, she is somebody's child," he said tearfully.
"Sometimes I end up spending my entire day in cremation grounds and cemeteries. There are just too many bodies," he said as he waited to hand over the stretcher at the crematorium.
Since April 17, when Khan picked up his first COVID-19 patient, he has seen the numbers in cases and deaths rise consistently.
"My ambulance was the only one in the fleet until then," he said. "But with an increase in the number of cases and deaths, we now have 17 ambulances."
Some days, death is the only thing he sees.
"There are so many bodies and so many patients," he said. "On some days, we don't even have time to eat. There have been times when I have had to take six patients at once."
I wonder how many covid deaths in delhi alone everyday
