'It felt like war': BBC journalists recall horrors of India's Covid lockdown

On 24 March 2020, India announced its first Covid lockdown, just as the world stood on the brink of a global pandemic that would claim millions of lives.

India's already fragile healthcare system collapsed under the pandemic's weight.

The WHO estimated over 4.7 million Covid deaths in India - nearly 10 times the official count - but the government rejected the figure, citing flaws in the methodology.

Five years later, BBC India journalists reflect on their experiences recounting how, at times, they became part of the story they were covering.

Soutik Biswas, BBC News

It was the summer of 2021.

I woke up to the frantic voice of a school teacher. Her 46-year-old husband had been battling Covid in a Delhi hospital, where oxygen was as scarce as hope.

Here we go again, I thought, dread creeping in. India was trapped in the deadly grip of a lethal second wave of infections, with Delhi at its heart. And it was just another day in a city where breathing itself had become a privilege.

We scrambled for help, making calls, sending SOS messages, hoping someone might have a lead.

Her voice shook as she told us her husband's oxygen levels had dipped to 58. It should have been 92 or higher. He was slipping, but she clung to the small comfort that it had climbed to 62. He was still conscious, still speaking. For now.

But how long could this last? I wondered. How many more lives would be lost because the basics - oxygen, beds, medicine - were beyond reach? This wasn't supposed to happen in 2021. Not here.

The woman called back. The hospital didn't even have an oxygen flow meter, she said. She had to find one herself.

We reached out again. Phones buzzed, tweets flew into the void, hoping someone would see us. Finally, a device was located - a small victory in a sea of despair. The oxygen would flow. For now.

The numbers didn't lie, though.

A report from the same hospital told of a 40-year-old man who died waiting for a bed. He found a stretcher, at least, the report helpfully added. That was where we were now: grateful for a place to lay the dead.

In the face of this, oxygen was a commodity. So were medicines, in short supply and hoarded by those who could pay. People were dying because they couldn't breathe, and the city choked on its own apathy.

This was a war. It felt like a war. And we were losing it.

Yogita Limaye, BBC News

"Balaji, why are you lying like this," screamed a woman outside Delhi's GTB hospital, shaking her unconscious brother who was lying on a stretcher.

Minutes later, her brother, the father of two children, died, waiting outside a hospital before he was even seen by a doctor.

I will never forget her cry.

Around her, families pleaded at the door of the hospital to get a doctor to come and see their loved ones.

They were among hundreds of pleas for help we heard over the weeks we reported on how the second wave of Covid, which began in March 2021, brought a nation to its knees.

It was as though people had been left to tackle a vicious pandemic on their own – going from hospital to hospital searching for beds and oxygen.

The second wave had not come without warning, but India's government, which had declared victory over the disease two months earlier, was caught unprepared by the resurgence.

In the ICU of a major hospital, I saw the head doctor pace up and down, making one phone call after another frantically searching for supplies of oxygen.

"There's just one hour of supply left. Reduce the oxygen we're supplying to our patients to the lowest levels needed to ensure all organs continue to function properly," he instructed his deputy, his face tense.

I distinctly remember the heat and fumes from 37 funeral pyres burning simultaneously under the April sun at a Delhi crematorium.

People sat in shock - not yet feeling the grief and anger that would come - seemingly stunned into silence by the frightening speed at which Covid ravaged the capital.

Our work messaging groups buzzed all the time with news of yet another colleague desperately needing a hospital bed for a loved one.

No-one was untouched by it.

In Pune, my father was recovering from a Covid-related heart attack he'd suffered a month earlier.

Back in my hometown Mumbai, one of my closest friends lay critical on a ventilator in hospital.

After five weeks in ICU, miraculously, he recovered. But my father's heart never did, and a year later, he suffered a fatal heart attack, leaving a permanent hole in our lives.

Covid-19 will always be the most difficult story I've ever covered.

Vikas Pandey, BBC News

Covering the pandemic was the hardest assignment of my life because it's a story that literally came home.

Friends, relatives and neighbours called every day, asking for help procuring oxygen cylinders, hospital beds and even essential medicines. I interviewed several grieving families at that time.

Yet, a few incidents have remained etched in my memory.

In 2021, I reported Altuf Shamsi's story, which sums up the unimaginable pain millions went through.

His pregnant wife and father were both infected with the virus and admitted to different hospitals in Delhi. He knew me through a friend and called to ask if I could help him find another doctor after the hospital where his dad was admitted told him that chances of survival were zero. While he was speaking to me, he got another call from his wife's doctor who said they were running out of oxygen for her.

He lost his father first and later texted me: "I was looking at his body, while reading SOS messages from Rehab's [his wife] hospital for oxygen."

A few days later, he lost his wife too after she gave birth to their daughter.

The two other incidents came closer to home than anything else.

A relative deteriorated very fast after being admitted to a hospital.

He was put on a ventilator and doctors gave a bleak prognosis. One of them advised trying an experimental drug that had shown some results in the UK.

I tweeted and called everybody I thought could help. It's hard to put that frustration into words - he was sinking with each passing hour but the drug that could potentially save him was nowhere to be found.

A kind doctor helped us with one injection but we needed three more. Then someone read my tweet and reached out - she had procured three vials for her father but he died before he could be given the doses. I took her help and my relative survived.

But a cousin did not. He was admitted to the same hospital. His oxygen levels were dipping every hour and he needed to be put on a ventilator, but the hospital didn't have any free.

I made calls the whole night.

The next morning, the hospital ran out of oxygen, leading to many deaths, including his. He left behind his wife and two young children. I still wonder if there was something more I could have done.

Geeta Pandey, BBC News

The morning after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a hard lockdown, I headed out to Delhi's main bus station. The only people out on the streets were police and paramilitaries, deployed to ensure people stayed indoors.

The bus station was deserted. A few hundred metres away, I met men, women and children who were looking for ways to reach home, hundreds of miles away. Over the next few days, those numbers swelled into millions as people desperately tried to find a way to be with their families and loved ones.

As the virus made its way over the next few months, and the capital city - along with the rest of the country - remained under a strict shutdown, tragedy lurked at every corner.

We feared stepping out and we feared staying in.

All hopes - including mine - were pinned on a vaccine that scientists across the globe were racing to develop.

I had last visited my mother, bedridden in our ancestral village 450 miles (724km) from Delhi, in January 2020, just a couple of months before the lockdown. My mother, like millions of other people, didn't really understand what Covid was - the disease that had suddenly disrupted their lives.

Every time I called, she had only one question: "When will you visit?" The fear that I could carry the virus to her at a time when she was most vulnerable kept me away.

On 16 January 2021, I was at Max hospital in Delhi when India rolled out the world's biggest vaccination drive, promising to vaccinate all the adults in the country of 1.4 billion people. Doctors and medical staff there described it as a "new dawn". Some told me they would visit their families as soon as they received their second doses.

I called my mother and told her that I will get my vaccine and visit her soon. But a week later, she was gone.

Anagha Pathak, BBC Marathi

A few days after India announced the lockdown, I was travelling to the border of Maharashtra state to document the impact of the restrictions.

It was three in the morning as I drove along the eerily empty Mumbai-Agra highway. My hometown of Nashik looked unrecognisable.

Instead of traffic, migrant workers filled the road, walking back home, stranded and out of work. Among them was a young couple from Uttar Pradesh. They had worked as labourers in Mumbai. The wife, still in her early 20s, was pregnant. They had hoped to catch a ride on a truck, but that didn't happen. By the time they reached Nashik, they had run out of food, water and money.

I will never forget seeing the pregnant woman, her fragile body walking under the scorching sun. I had never felt more helpless. Covid protocols prevented me from offering them a ride. All I could do was give them some water and snacks, while documenting their journey.

A few miles ahead, around 300 people waited for a government bus to take them to the state border. But it was nowhere in sight. After making some calls, two buses finally arrived - still not enough. But I made sure the couple got on the one heading towards Madhya Pradesh state, where they were supposed to catch another bus.

I followed them in my car and waited for some time for them to catch their next bus. It never came.

Eventually, I left. I had an assignment to finish.

Five years have passed, and I still wonder: Did the woman make it home? Did she survive? I don't know her name, but I still remember her weary eyes and fragile body.

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