India is currently in the midst the single worst spike in COVID cases experienced anywhere in the world since the start of the pandemic.
At time of recording, India was registering over 350,000 new cases each day, with no end in sight.
Hospitals are completely overwhelmed. Oxygen is in very short supply. People are dying of COVID on the streets.
Given the sheer size of India, what is happening right now is a humanitarian crisis of a massive scale.
On the line with me to explain how and why the COVID crisis got so bad so quickly in India is Michael Kugelman, the Asia Program Deputy Director and Senior Associate for South Asia at the Woodrow Wilson Center. We kick off discussing the current state of the COVID crisis in India before having a broader conversation about the political and international implications of India’s spiraling health crisis.