Thread by @NBCNews

In India’s Covid-19 crisis, the world’s worst, a family’s traumatic quest for help

#NBCNewsThreads (1/8) nbcnews.to/32HCxKJ

Ujwala Dupare gripped the hand of her younger brother, Praveen Durge, while he lay struggling to catch his breath in the back of the car as the family frantically searched for an empty hospital bed in the western Indian state of Maharashtra. (2/8)

For more than 3 hours, the family went to about 12 hospitals across the city of Chandrapur, Dupare said.

“All of them turned us away.” (3/8)

As they approached the last hospital on their list, Durge’s wife, Khushabu, saw that his eyes had closed. She screamed and called his name. “Wake up, please, get up,” she cried, according to Dupare. (4/8)

The school teacher and married father of 1 died in the back seat of the car from complications related to Covid-19.

“His son keeps asking, ’Where is daddy?’” Dupare said. “What can we tell him? He’s a small child and doesn’t understand what’s going on. It’s too traumatic.” (5/8)

Durge is one of more than 187,000 people, according to official figures, to have died from Covid-19 in India.

The country reported more than 332,000 new infections Friday, a world record that raised the total number of cases past 16 million since the start of the pandemic. (6/8)

The surge has brought pain, fear and anxiety to millions of families across the country.

As they desperately try to navigate the crisis, thousands of Indians are turning to social media for help. They look for vacant beds, oxygen or the antiviral medication remdesivir. (7/8)

For Dupare, this is about more than a single family’s tragedy.

“Forty eight people died from Covid-19 at one of the hospitals we visited that night,” she said.

“I want people to know what is happening in India. This is real.” (8/8) nbcnews.to/3dIwpZ5