What I saw on the ground amid India's COVID apocalypse

I've visited the Covid wards in several of New Delhi's biggest state-run hospitals. One, Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital, turned its car park into an intensive care ward. Patients are on stretchers in the corridors. Each bed contains as many as three or four patients, all sharing a single cylinder of oxygen. Even the most seriously ill, those on ventilators, are having the amount of oxygen in their blood capped at 94 per cent. Normal levels are 95 per cent. Even being admitted is no guarantee they'll be treated. Families are being forced to bring in their own food, medicines and oxygen. There are fights on the streets as relatives desperately battle for any supplies... The doctors and nurses say they haven't witnessed an emergency on this scale in their lifetimes. Some are working three or four shifts in a row as colleagues increasingly contract the virus themselves. They are exhausted. On one ward, they had been making their rounds once an hour to check up on everyone. Now, because of the sheer numbers, that's only happening once or twice a day. The patient care is a shambles. There are huge queues outside the gates as people, some desperately ill, await Covid tests. To be admitted, you need a test to prove you are positive. But the laboratories are overwhelmed. Huge numbers of their own staff have fallen sick with the virus or are in isolation at home. Labs that were processing 5,000 tests a day are now being sent 35,000 a day. It's taking days to obtain a result.