NEW DELHI. Torrential rains, floods, uprooted roofs and electricity poles, hundreds of thousands of displaced people. The fury of cyclone Tauktae, defined by the Indian Meteorological Department as “very severe”, or similar in scope to that of a 3rd degree hurricane, has raged on a country on its knees due to the devastating second wave of Covid. in the Atlantic or the Pacific. The concern also rises because, according to the Department of Meteorology, Tauktae, with the winds that run at over 160 km per hour, could prove to be the worst cyclone in the country in the last 30 years. After touching Goa and Kartataka over the weekend, where it claimed at least 8 victims, Tauktae raged on Mumbai, sweeping Bandra and other neighborhoods near the coast, depriving them of electricity for most of the day.
Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj airport is stopped, the subway and trains of the railway network have been paralyzed and continue to travel in the economic capital of the country even in times of lockdown. Tauktae runs north-east and will reach Gujarat, which is gearing up to mitigate the impact: 150 thousand people from the villages on the coast have been evacuated by the Civil Protection, while Covid patients from at least three large hospitals have been transferred. A further obstacle to the fight against Covid, which, despite some improvement in the data, continues to keep the country in check: for the first time in 26 days, India today registered less than 300 thousand new positives.
«An encouraging development», according to the Minister of Health, and which, according to some experts, suggests the «exceeding the peak» of the second wave. But the situation of the hospitals, the dripping of the daily discovery of corpses buried along the Ganges, the shortage of vaccines, medicines and oxygen, and the shameful black market, are pieces of a still desperate picture, and of an incredible inadequacy of the Indian government. in the face of the pandemic.