The country reported a devastating 1.57 million new cases of coronavirus in the last seven days, Reuters reports, as hospitals were pushed beyond the brink and were forced to start turning infected patients away.

The country’s vaccination program also started to buckle under the pressure of the crisis, as the rollout was derailed by problems with transportation, and an abject lack of supply.

Infections have now spread from the crowded cities to remote villages. While India’s cities are densely populated, it’s the rural areas where up to 70 per cent of the country’s 1.3 billion citizens live.

On Friday, the country broke a record, reporting 414,188 new cases of COVID-19. Some 3915 died from the virus that day, taking the total number of deaths to 234,083.

The statistics are shocking, but medical experts believe the true scale of the tragedy may be many times greater than what is being officially reported.

RELATED: Australian citizen has died in India

RELATED: ‘Death on the streets’: Aussies’ India horror

Government faces scrutiny over India flight ban

The Australian government’s decision to ban flights from India this week has come under intense scrutiny, as critics said the decision was “racist” and “unlawful”.

The Prime Minister Scott Morrison defended the ban, saying the decision was made on health advice and to ease pressure on Australia’s medical and quarantine system.

He said the ban was “working”, and repatriation flights would resume after the review date of May 15.

Australian citizen dies in India

On Friday, tragic news emerged that an Australian citizen had died in India.

High Commissioner to India, Barry O’Farrell, said during a senate committee hearing it wasn’t yet clear if the person had died of COVID-19, or other causes.

“The department is aware and providing consular assistance, in accordance with its charter, to the family of an Australian permanent resident who reportedly has died in India,” he said.

“I’m advised, owing to our privacy obligations, we won’t be providing any further comment.”

Narendra Modi blamed for crisis

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been criticised for failing to suppress the second wave in the country. In January, Mr Modi told the World Economics Forum he’d saved “humanity from a big disaster by containing the coronavirus effectively”.

But critics say as the virus began to spread in the country Mr Modi allowed large religious festivals and political rallies to go ahead, which became superspreader events.

Support grows to waive vaccine patents

As vaccination rates have fallen in India amid the worsening crisis, international support has grown for a US proposal to waive patents on coronavirus vaccines.

Wealthy countries have been accused of hoarding shots, while poor countries struggle to get inoculation programs off the ground.

Under intense pressure to ease protections for vaccine manufacturers, Washington’s Trade Representative Katherine Tai said Wednesday the country “supports the waiver of those protections for COVID-19 vaccines”.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the announcement was “a monumental moment in the fight against COVID-19”.

Australian man trapped in India for a year

Australian man Sunny Joura has been stuck in India for a year, after he flew home to see his dying father. He is being kept away from Australia by what AFP called “one of the world’s harshest coronavirus border controls”.

Mr Joura had repeatedly tried to fly home on both commercial and repatriation flights, but had every flight cancelled. The most recent flight was one day after the most recent flight ban was introduced.

“The street that I live on — 60 to 70 per cent of households are infected with Covid. And in some cases, whole families are infected,” Mr Joura told AFP in New Delhi, where he is holed up in a house with his 72-year-old mother.

“It’s scary. Every day, we are in a way not sure whether we’re going to get it (COVID-19),” he said.

—with AFP