“The United States is delivering supplies worth more than US$100 million in the coming days to provide urgent relief to our partners in India,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said on Thursday.

Japan became the latest to offer help, announcing on Friday it would despatch 300 oxygen concentrators and 300 ventilators to India.

“Japan stands with India, our friend and partner, in her efforts to fight [the] Covid-19 pandemic through this additional emergency assistance,” the foreign ministry said.

In many Indian cities, hospitals are running out of beds as relatives of the sick jostle for medicines and oxygen cylinders.

“We rushed to multiple hospitals, but were denied admission everywhere,” said the son of an 84-year-old woman who died at home this week after a desperate search for a hospital bed and oxygen in Kolkata, capital of West Bengal state.

02:05

India’s Covid-19 patients seek free oxygen at temple as country hits 200,000 coronavirus deaths

India’s Covid-19 patients seek free oxygen at temple as country hits 200,000 coronavirus deaths

The severe medical oxygen shortage is expected to ease by the middle of next month, a senior industry executive said, with output rising by 25 per cent and transport infrastructure adapting to the surge in demand.

Medical oxygen consumption in India has shot up more than eightfold from usual levels to about 7,200 tonnes per day this month, according to Moloy Banerjee of Linde Plc, the country’s biggest producer.

“This is what is causing the crisis because no one was prepared for it, particularly the steep curve up,” said Banerjee, who heads the company’s South Asia gas business.

04:06

International community races to help India tackle worsening Covid-19 outbreak

International community races to help India tackle worsening Covid-19 outbreak

A logistics crisis impeding the speedy movement of oxygen from surplus regions in eastern India to hard-hit northern and western areas would also be resolved in the coming weeks as more distribution assets are deployed, Banerjee said.

“My expectation is that by the middle of May we will definitely have the transport infrastructure in place that allows us to service this demand across the country,” he said.

Banerjee said India was importing about 100 cryogenic containers to transport large quantities of liquid medical oxygen, with Linde providing 60 of those. Some are being flown in by Indian Air Force aircraft.

Many of these containers will be placed on dedicated trains that would cut across the country, each carrying between 80-160 tonnes of liquid oxygen and delivering to multiple cities.

The company is also looking to double the number of oxygen cylinders in its distribution network to at least 10,000, which would improve supply to rural areas with weak infrastructure.

“We are trying to create a hub-and-spoke type of system so that we make a lot of liquid oxygen available at the local area, from where the local dealers can pick it up,” Banerjee said.

01:46

Indian gravediggers work 24-hour shifts as coronavirus death toll soars

Indian gravediggers work 24-hour shifts as coronavirus death toll soars

Several states have warned, however, they do not have sufficient vaccine stocks and the expanded rollout is threatened by administrative bickering, confusion over prices and technical glitches on the government’s digital vaccine platform.

All vaccination centres in India’s financial capital of Mumbai were shut for three days starting Friday due to a shortage of vaccines.

Only about 9 per cent of India’s 1.4 billion people have received a vaccine dose since January.

01:37

105-year-old Indian man and 95-year-old wife beat Covid-19

105-year-old Indian man and 95-year-old wife beat Covid-19

India is unlikely to resume exporting vaccines to neighbouring countries, including Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, until at least July, The Hindu reported.

India suspended exports of both commercial and grant-based vaccine doses to countries in early April, when the second wave of the pandemic hit India. Foreign Secretary Harsh Shringla would not give a timeline for when the supplies would resume.

“Today, our needs are far greater, and all our partners understand that in this context, today what we require is to ramp up our vaccination programme, to 2-3 billion, so we have to ramp up significantly,” Shringla said, according to The Hindu.

Additional reporting by Reuters