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TORONTO —
As India’s COVID-19 crisis grows more dire, relatives says they’re worried about family members overseas and some Canadians are working to raise money to send much-needed supplies to the country.
Every evening across Canada, members of India’s diaspora, including Gurpartap Singh Toor, anxiously check in with family overseas.
Singh Toor told CTV News that his grandparents are in their late 80s and live in the north of India, where hospitals have filled up fast with coronavirus patients.
“In the middle of the night sometimes you just worry about it, like you’re thinking about them, are they going to be OK,” he said in an interview from Caledon, Ont.
Such fears are shared by many families in this country, with Canada home to at least 1.4 million people of East Indian ancestry.
In Surrey B.C., Neeraj Walia says he has been constantly checking in on his mom in India. Walia said he is worried about her and other relatives after his brother-in-law there recently died from COVID-19.
“It’s a fear, it’s a stress. I’m very much concerned for my family,” Walia said.
India set another global record for daily COVID-19 cases on Friday, logging 386,452 new infections and 3,498 deaths.
The country has reported more than 300,000 new infections daily for nine consecutive days and has recorded more than 18.7 million cases since the pandemic began.
However, with hospitals overloaded and some having to turn patients away, experts fear those figures are an undercount.
A shortage of oxygen in the country has prompted families to line up outside oxygen plants, in the hopes of acquiring any amount for sick loved ones.
Winnipeg’s Anil Sedha says images of those long lines outside of the factories prompted him to take action.
“I felt I should do something,” Sedha said.
He created a GoFundMe page to raise money to buy badly needed oxygen concentrators.
“And all of the concentrators are going directly to the Indian Red Cross,” Sedha explained.
So far, he has managed to get seven of them shipped from Colorado.
Other Canadians are also doing what they can to help in India’s fight against COVID-19, including My Indians in Canada Association.
The organization is helping Ashwani Aggarwal, who was stuck in New Delhi after flights were cancelled.
Having been unable to rebook a flight back home to Brampton, Ont., Aggarwal has been picking up supplies around New Delhi, including oxygen, and delivering them to those in need.
“We tried to help a few families over there yesterday by providing food on their doorsteps,” Aggarwal told CTV News.
The first emergency shipment of medical aid also arrived from the U.S. in India on Friday, delivering therapeutics, nearly a million rapid test kits and 400 cylinders of oxygen.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on Tuesday that Canada would send $10 million through the Canadian Red Cross to the Indian Red Cross to help the country’s overwhelmed health-care system cope with the record infections.
Trudeau said the money will go to fund ambulance services and the local purchasing of personal protective equipment.
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