Second wave of COVID19 has hit India 'like a tsunami': Kiran Mazumdar Shaw

India is struggling with a second wave of the pandemic with more than 3,00,000 daily new coronavirus cases being reported in the past few days, and hospitals are reeling under a shortage of medical oxygen and beds.

The second wave of COVID-19 has hit India "like a tsunami", Biocon founder Kiran Mazumdar Shaw has said, attributing the unprecedented spike in coronavirus cases to the recent state elections and religious festivals in the country.

"This time around the second wave has hit like a tsunami. And the unfortunate part is it has not spared any part of our country," Mazumdar said during a virtual panel discussion on global vaccine equity organised by One Share World.

"So hospital beds and oxygen, we don't have enough human resources to manage the kind of numbers we're seeing today. We don't have enough medicines to treat patients with. We don't have enough medical supplies of most types to deal with this pandemic," she said.

"If India is not safe, I can tell you the world is not safe," Mazumdar said. GAVI chief Seth Berkley said that the India crisis has made it difficult for the availability of vaccines.

India at the start of this year, felt so complacent and confident that it was in fact, even donating vaccines to certain parts of the world before this second wave hit the country, said Mazumdar.

"And now of course, we just need to ramp up vaccine production as much as we can to deal with this crisis," she said.

New coronavirus cases and deaths in India hit a record daily high with 4,12,262 new infections and 3,980 fatalities being reported, taking the total tally of COVID-19 cases to 2,10,77,410 and the death toll to 2,30,168, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Thursday.