BBC journalists continue in the locked horrors of India for five years

On March 24, 2020, India declared the first Covid lock, because the world stood on the threshold of the global pandemia that will claim millions of people.

India’s already fragile health system collapsed under the weight of the pandemic.

Who evaluated 4.7 million coveng deaths In India – about 10 times in the official number – but the government denied this figure by showing defects in the methodology.

Five years later, the BBC explains the experience of Indian journalists, sometimes, which they are part of the story they surrounded.

Soutique Biswas, BBC News

It was the summer of 2021.

I woke up to a school teacher’s angry voice. His 46-year-old husband fought a Covid at a Delhi Hospital where oxygen was as little hope.

I’m going back here, I thought he was creeping, he enters. India trapped in the deadly grip of the wave of deadly second infections in Delhi. And it was just another day in a city where he breathed.

He said he could guide someone by sending calls, sending SOS messages.

Her husband’s oxygen level was shaken as he was sank to 58. Should have been 92 or higher. He slipped, but he clung to the small comfort he got up to 62. He was still conscious, he was still talking. So far.

So how long can it last? I wonder. Basics – Oxygen, beds, medicine – how much life will be lost to reach? This was not necessary to take place in 2021. Not here.

The woman called back. There was no oxygen flow meter in the hospital. Had to find himself.

We have reached again. Phones noisy, tweets flew into the cavity by hoping for someone. Finally, a device settled – a small victory in the sea of ​​despair. Oxygen will flow. So far.

The numbers didn’t lie either.

A report from the same hospital, spoke about a 40-year-old man waiting for a bed. At least he found a report, at least the report helped. It was the place where we were: I am grateful to somewhere to put the dead.

In front of this, oxygen was a commodity. Thus, the drugs were collected by the short time and those who could afford. Because they could not breathe, people were dying and the city drowned in his indifference.

It was a war. It was felt like a war. And we lost it.

Yogita Limaye, BBC News

“Balaji is lying like this,” Delhin shouted a woman outside the GTB hospital, shook the unconscious brother.

A few minutes later, his brother, the father of the two children, waiting in front of a hospital outside a hospital before he saw the doctor.

I will never forget her crying.

The families around him were begging at the doctor’s door to see the doctor’s door and relatives.

In March 2021, the second wave of Covid was one of the hundreds of properties we heard in our weeks.

It is as if people are left to fight a bad pandemic – go to the hospital looking for bed and oxygen from the hospital.

There was a second wave Do not come without notice, However, two months ago, the Indian government, who won over the disease, was caught unprepared by renewal.

In the ICU of a large hospital, I saw that the chief physician is up and down, a phone call is a phone call after searching for each other’s oxygen supply.

“There are an hourly supply.

At the same time at the Delhi Cematorium, I clearly remember the burning heat and smoke of the 37 burning 37 funeral packs.

People sat in shock – they still do not feel sadness and anger that think about the future – the covenant was stunned silently with the speed of fear.

Our business messaging groups always sounded with another counterpart reports that need a hospital bed for someone who is always loved.

No one would be touched by him.

My father at Pune has healed a heart attack with the Covid he took a month ago.

My native land is in Mumbai, one of my best friends slept critical in the hospital.

After five weeks, he was miraculously healed in ICU. However, my father had never done his heart, and a year later he had a deadly heart attack by leaving a permanent hole in our lives.

Covid-19 will always be the most difficult story I have covered.

Vikas Pandey, BBC News

Covering the pandemic, it was the hardest appointment of my life, because it’s a story as if it came home.

Friends, relatives and neighbors called every day, wanted to help to get oxygen cylinders, hospital beds and even important drugs. I met a few sad families at that time.

Again, several incidents were detained in my memory.

I reported in 2021 The story of Altuf ShamsiMillions passed by the fact that they can see unimaginable pain.

The pregnant wife and father were both infected and admitted to different hospitals in Delhi. He knew me from a friend and called on me to ask if I could help him find another doctor after his father’s adopted doctor and he was zero to survive. Talking to me, he received another call from his wife who said he was running out of oxygen for him.

First he lost his father and then wrote to me, “I looked at his body, while he reads SOS messages from Rehab (wife) hospital for oxygen.

A few days later, he lost his wife after his daughters born.

The other two occurrences were closer than anything else.

Deteriorized a relative after admitted to a hospital.

It was placed in a ventilator and doctors gave an eye forecast. One of them advised to try an experimental medicine that shows some results in the UK.

Tweeted and called everyone I think I could help. It is difficult to put this disappointment into words – every past hour, but the drug could not potentially save.

A kind of doctor helped us with an injection, but we need three more. Then someone read my tweet – bought three fliers for his father, but he died before the doses were given. I got his help and my relative survived.

But it was not a cousin. Admitted to the same hospital. His oxygen level was immersed every hour and he had to put the ventilator, but it was not free in the hospital.

I called all night.

The next morning, the hospital, including many deaths, was exhausted. Laid behind his wife and two young children. I still wonder if there are more things.

Geeta Pandey, BBC News

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’nin was locked in the morning in the morning, I went to Delhi’s main bus station. The only people in the streets were police and paraches, people were placed to ensure that they were closed.

The bus station was located. I met the men, women and children, looking for ways to get home in a distance of several hundred meters away, home, hundreds of miles. During the days later, these numbers fell down to millions of ground as millions of people try to find a way to be with their families and loved ones.

The virus was under a serious parcel in every corner, as in the next few months and the rest of the country – the rest of the country.

We were afraid to take steps and were afraid to stay inside.

All hopes are closed in a vaccine where scientists competed in all parts of the world, including mine.

The last time in my mother, next to our father, 450 miles from Delhi (724 km), in January 2020, a few months before locking, I really did not really understand what Javid’s life is.

Every time I called, he had only one question: “When will you visit?” At a time when the virus is the most sensitive, the fear I could have made me away.

On January 16, 2021, I was in Delhi Hospital, which promises to vaccinate all adults in India, India, 1.4 billion people in the country. Doctors and medical workers there described it as a “new dawn.” Some will visit their families after we received their second doses.

I called my mother and told him that I was vaccinated and will visit soon. But a week later he went.

Anagha Pathak, BBC Marathi

After announcing Indian Unlock, I went to the border of Maharashtra to document the effects of restrictions.

It was three in the morning, I drove eerilous empty Mumbai-Agra highway. Nashik looked unconformer for his hometown.

Instead of traffic, migrant workers filled the road, returning home, closed and desired. Among them were a young couple from Uttar Pradesh. They worked as a worker in Mumbai. The wife, who was still in his 20s, was pregnant. They hoped to walk over a truck, but it did not happen. After reaching Nashik, food, water and money ran out.

I will never forget to see the pregnant woman, and her brittle body walks under the burning sun. I never felt more helpless. Covid protocols prevented me offering a walk. What I can do, he gave them a little water and snack while docoring his journeys.

A few miles ahead, about 300 people waited to take the state bus to the state border. But there is no place in the eyes. After making some calls, two buses finally arrived – still not enough. But I was sure of a headline to Madhya Pradesh, where the couple should take another bus.

I watched them in my cars and waited for a while to catch their next bus. Never came.

Finally, I left. There was a task to finish.

Five years have passed and I am still surprised: Woman brought him home? Survived? I do not know his name, but I still remember his tired eyes and fragile body.

Follow BBC News India Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.