COVID-19: 'Panic' among India health workers over PPE shortages

Early in March, a 37-year-old lab technician at the Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (MGIMS) in the western state of Maharashtra got sick at a time when the coronavirus pandemic was still not high on the Indian government's agenda. "He had pneumonia in both his lungs and his condition was severe enough to be put in the intensive care unit (ICU)," Dr SP Kalantri, the director professor of medicine at MGIMS, told Al Jazeera. The staff of another hospital in Mumbai, the capital of Maharashtra and the country's financial hub, had already been quarantined after a patient tested positive. There is a sense of alarm among healthcare professionals across India as the country hunkers down in wait for what many believe will be a tsunami of coronavirus cases. "It is going to help stop the spread of the virus to an extent, but it is also a time for the healthcare infrastructure to prepare itself," Dr Yogesh Jain, a doctor who works in Bilaspur district of Chhattisgarh state, told Al Jazeera. On Tuesday, Reuters reported that the government was planning to procure more PPE domestically and was also exploring imports from South Korea and China. Minutes before talking to Al Jazeera, Jain was attempting to get a patient with COVID-19-like symptoms transported to the government medical college to Bilaspur town for a test. The government had also not paid attention to World Health Organization (WHO) warnings about impending global shortages of PPE on February 27, and called on industries to ramp up production by just 40 percent. The shortages come amid a humanitarian crisis over the government lockdown, with tens of thousands of migrant workers fleeing cities to reach their homes in rural areas. While the number of reported cases has crossed 1,200 with 32 deaths, many believe India's low testing rate makes those statistics meaningless.