Cyclone Tauktae was set to hit India on Monday, accompanied by extremely violent and potentially destructive winds, hampering efforts to tackle the devastating Covid-19 epidemic.
At least six people died over the weekend due to torrential rains and strong winds when Tauktae, the biggest storm to hit West India in 30 years according to media reports, crossed the Arabian Sea, with the state of Gujarat (Northwest) in sight.
The "extremely severe cyclonic storm" is expected to make landfall Monday between 8:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. local time, accompanied by winds of 155 to 165 km / hour, with gusts of up to 185 km / hour, the Indian meteorological department warned.
The department has warned that storm surges could reach up to three meters in height in some coastal districts of Gujarat.
Displaced Covid patients
Tauktae is preparing to strike as India faces a second epidemic wave of great violence, which kills more than 4,000 every day. Hospitals are overcrowded, health workers are exhausted, oxygen and medicines are lacking. Bombay (West), capital of the state of Maharashtra, is already flooded. The authorities closed the airport on Monday for several hours and asked the population to stay sheltered after having had to evacuate 580 Covid patients "to safer places" from three field hospitals on Sunday. Maharashtra evacuated around 12,500 people from coastal areas.
In Gujarat, more than 100,000 people were evacuated in 17 districts overnight from Sunday to Monday and all Covid-19 patients treated in hospitals located five kilometers from the coast were also displaced.
The authorities in this region are working to avoid any power cuts in the some 400 hospitals and 41 oxygen plants in the 12 coastal districts where the cyclone is expected to strike the hardest.
The double pain of the cyclone
"To make sure that hospitals treating Covid do not face power cuts, 1,383 generators have been installed," said a senior local official, Pankaj Kumar. Thirty-five “green corridors”, priority accesses to supply Covid hospitals with oxygen, have also been built, he added. Health protocols against the virus, such as wearing masks, physical distancing and the use of disinfectants, will be observed in shelters for evacuees, officials said. The state of Gujarat, which officially recorded 9,000 deaths from the virus - a toll probably undervalued as everywhere in the country, according to experts - also suspended the vaccination campaign for two days. Bombay did the same for a day.
India, which has 1.3 billion inhabitants, recorded on Monday 4,100 deaths and nearly 280,000 new cases of Covid in the past 24 hours, bringing the total toll since the start of the pandemic to nearly 25 million case - a doubling since April 1 - with more than 250,000 deaths.
"This cyclone is a terrible double sorrow for millions of people in India", reacted in a statement Udaya Regmi, of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
The cyclone is already killing its first people
Thousands of rescuers were mobilized to face the first big tropical storm of the season and units of the coast guard, navy, army and air force were placed in a state of repair. alert, Interior Minister Amit Shah said in a statement. Four people died on Saturday due to torrential rains and strong winds hitting the state of Karnataka (southwest), according to the emergency management agency.
Two people have also died in the tourist state of Goa, local government chief Pramod Sawant said on Sunday.
According to local media, two other people lost their lives and 23 fishermen are missing in the neighboring state of Kerala (South).
In May 2020, also during the Covid-19 pandemic, more than 110 people died during the passage of the powerful Cyclone Amphan which devastated eastern India and Bangladesh.
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