In the space of just a few days in mid-April, more than 1,600 cases were confirmed among devotees. Millions of worshippers have participated in the weeks-long festival since the first day of bathing on March 11, despite clear evidence that thousands are testing positive for the virus after attending. Tens of thousands of Hindu devotees continue to show up each day for a dip in the Ganges as part of the Kumbh Mela pilgrimage in Haridwar, Uttarakhand. If the apocalypse had an image, it would be the hospitals of India.ĭespite these inescapable horrors, much of India remains in a sort of parallel reality where COVID-19 is not a threat.
Multiple hospitals in India are petitioning the High Courts to seek immediate oxygen supply. As I was writing this, the news broke that 22 critically ill patients lost their lives at a hospital in Maharashtra after a leak from the main hospital oxygen tank stopped the flow to their ventilators. “Bajali, why don’t you wake up?” she cries. One devastating video from the BBC shows a woman trying to help her dying brother regain consciousness. Videos show people stealing oxygen cylinders for their relatives. On Friday, Delhi’s leading Gangaram Hospital issued an SOS that it only had enough oxygen left for two hours and that 25 patients had already lost their lives in the hospital due to oxygen shortages. Increasingly, people are dying in plain sight. Unofficially, It’s Almost Certainly the Worst Read More: Officially, India Has the World’s Second-Worst COVID-19 Outbreak. There is no escape from it in the past week alone, I have lost four people to COVID-19-a distant relative, my next-door neighbor, and two of my closest friends, both in their mid-30s. Three health officials who asked to remain anonymous told me they believe that the daily number of COVID-19 deaths in India has already crossed the 10,000 figure. Every day, more than 2,000 people in India are dying with COVID-19, according to official numbers-and experts believe that number is a dramatic underestimate.
India’s total confirmed COVID-19 cases to date are second to the United States overall, and its daily case and death rates are rapidly catching up with the U.S.-which means, given India’s much larger population, its raw case and death numbers will surpass the U.S. Since the pandemic began, India has confirmed more than 16 million cases and more than 186,000 deaths. It had broken that record the day before, too. More than half of the world’s titanium comes from placer mining of beach dunes and sands. In placer operations, the mined material is washed and sluiced to concentrate the heavier minerals.On Friday, April 23, India recorded 332,730 coronavirus cases, the highest single-day total of cases recorded globally so far. Placer mining is used to recover valuable minerals from sediments in present-day river channels, beach sands, or ancient stream deposits. In a surface mine, hard rock must be drilled and blasted, although some minerals are soft enough to mine without blasting. Many industrial minerals are also mined this way, as these ores are usually low in value and were deposited at or near the Earth’s surface. Lower grade metal ores found closer to the surface can be profitably mined using surface mining methods, which generally cost less than underground methods. Once at the surface, the material is sent to a mill to separate the ore from the waste rock. The rock is drilled and blasted, then moved to the surface by truck, belt conveyor, or elevator. Large tabular-shaped ore bodies or ore bodies lying more than 1,000 feet (300 m) below the surface are generally mined underground as well. Higher-grade metallic ores found in veins deep under the Earth’s surface can be profitably mined using underground methods, which tend to be more expensive. The location and shape of the deposit, strength of the rock, ore grade, mining costs, and current market price of the commodity are some of the determining factors for selecting which mining method to use. The primary methods used to extract minerals from the ground are: