“I’m sitting in my apartment waiting to catch the disease. That’s what it feels like right now in New Delhi with the world’s worst coronavirus crisis advancing around us. It is out there, I am in here, and I feel like it’s only a matter of time before I, too, get sick. India is now recording more infections per day — as many as 350,000 — than any other country has since the pandemic began, and that’s just the official number, which most experts think is a vast underestimation. New Delhi, India’s sprawling capital of 20 million, is suffering a calamitous surge. A few days ago, the positivity rate hit a staggering 36 percent.” Jeffrey Gettleman, the NYT’s South Asia bureau chief, on what it’s like in India right now. ‘This Is a Catastrophe.’ In India, Illness Is Everywhere. “A new variant known here as ‘the double mutant’ may be doing a lot of the damage. The science is still early but from what we know, this variant contains one mutation that may make the virus more contagious and another that may make it partially resistant to vaccines. Doctors are pretty scared. Some we have spoken to said they had been vaccinated twice and still got seriously ill, a very bad sign.”

+ “The real number, experts fear, could be up to 30 times higher — meaning more than half a billion cases.” As Covid sweeps India, experts say cases and deaths are going unreported.

+ The US will share up to 60 million doses of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccines with India and other nations.

+ You can help too. Donate to the Hope Foundation’s India Covid Response.