‘Cannon fodder’: Medical students in India feel betrayed

Since the beginning of the week, Dr. Siddharth Tara, a postgraduate medical student at New Delhi’s government-run Hindu Rao Hospital, has had a fever and persistent headache. He took a COVID-19 test, but the results have been delayed as the country’s health system implodes. His hospital, overburdened and understaffed, wants him to keep working until the testing laboratory confirms he has COVID-19. On Tuesday, India reported 323,144 new infections for a total of more than 17.6 million cases, behind only the United States. India’s Health Ministry also reported another 2,771 deaths in the past 24 hours, with 115 Indians succumbing to the disease every hour. Experts say those figures are likely an undercount. “I am not able to breathe. In fact, I’m more symptomatic than my patients. So how can they make me work?” asked Tara.