India’s coronavirus infections cross 18 million

India’s total COVID-19 cases passed 18 million on Thursday after another world record daily infection and death tally and as the government rejected reports of problems with its vaccine campaign, Reuters reported.

India reported 379,257 new COVID-19 cases and 3,645 new deaths on Thursday, according to health ministry data. It was the deadliest day so far for any country hit by the pandemic.

India’s best hope to curb its second deadly wave of COVID-19 was to vaccinate its vast population, said experts, and on Wednesday it opened registrations for everyone above the age of 18 to be given jabs from Saturday.

But the country, which is one of the world’s biggest producer of vaccines, does not have the stocks for the estimated 600 million people becoming eligible.

Many people who tried to sign up said they failed, complaining on social media that they could not get a slot or they simply could not get online to register as the website repeatedly crashed, Reuters reported.

“Statistics indicate that far from crashing or performing slowly, the system is performing without any glitches,” the government said in a statement late on Wednesday.

The government said more than eight million people had registered for the vaccinations, but it was not immediately clear how many had got slots.

About nine percent of India’s population have received one dose since the vaccination campaign began in January with health workers and then the elderly.

The second wave of infections has overwhelmed hospitals and crematoriums and prompted an increasingly urgent response from allies overseas sending equipment, Reuters reported.

“India’s COVID outbreak is a humanitarian crisis,” U.S. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren said on Twitter.

Delhi is reporting one death from COVID-19 every four minutes and ambulances have been taking the bodies of COVID-19 victims to makeshift crematorium facilities in parks and parking lots, where bodies are burned on rows and rows of funeral pyres.

The U.S. State Department issued a travel advisory warning on Wednesday against travel to India because of the pandemic and approved the voluntary departure of family members of U.S. government employees in India.

Reuters reported that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been criticised for allowing massive political rallies and religious festivals which have been super spreader events in recent weeks.

More than 8.4 million eligible voters are set to vote on Thursday in the last phase of an eight-part election in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal, even as the state witnesses a record rise in coronavirus cases.

“The people of this country are entitled to a full and honest account of what led more than a billion people into a catastrophe,” Vikram Patel, The Pershing Square Professor of Global Health in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School said in The Hindu newspaper.