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What you need to know:India’s Covid Crisis Threatens the World’s Pandemic Recovery
A health worker takes swab samples under the light of a colleague’s mobile phone at the Jawahar Lal Nehru Stadium in New Delhi, on April 16.

A health worker takes swab samples under the light of a colleague’s mobile phone at the Jawahar Lal Nehru Stadium in New Delhi, on April 16.

Photographer: T. Narayan/Bloomberg
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‘Please Help!’: Covid Tragedy Spills Onto Social Media in India

Frantic posts reveal the scale of India’s Covid crisis as people plead for everything from hospital beds to medicines, CT scans, oxygen and even food for the elderly in quarantine.

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These days, social media posts in India are no longer about cheeky photos, funny memes or political jokes. Instead, frantic calls to save lives are flooding Twitter and Instagram as the latest wave of coronavirus cases and deaths overwhelm the nation’s hospitals and crematoriums.

On Bharath Pottekkat’s Instagram feed, one message screams “Mumbai please help! Lungs damaged due to pneumonia infection. In need of ICU bed.” Another reads “Plasma urgently required for treatment of Covid patient in Max Hospital, Delhi.” More follow. “Urgently needed Tocilizumab injection. Please DM if you know of stock in and around Mumbai.”