COVID-19 kills three journalists a day in India, 45 in last two weeks

COVID-19 is killing three journalists a day in India, with 45 dying in the last two weeks, according to the Swiss press organization Press Emblem Campaign.

The death toll for journalists in India is among the world’s worst, as the country deals with a massive outbreak of COVID-19, according to the group.

“India with 107 media [COVID-19] casualties has already placed itself on the third position just below Brazil (181 dead) and Peru (140) in the list of Covid-19 victims among journalists,” the group said in an article about the status of journalists covering COVID-19 in the subcontinent.

On Wednesday, India became the fourth nation in the world where more than 200,000 have died from the virus, second only to the U.S. The other countries to reach that grim milestone are Mexico and Brazil.

As the country struggles to treat pandemic victims, it has experienced shortages of oxygen, hospital beds and other medical resources used to treat people infected by COVID-19.

In one case, 20 patients died from COVID-19 in one night in a hospital in New Delhi because of a lack of oxygen.

Journalists have been directly affected by the shortages. Vinay Srivastava, a journalist in Lucknow, in Uttar Pradesh state, couldn’t get a test or medical care and tweeted about declining oxygen, according to The Guardian. He died just over a week ago. On Sunday, the disease killed four journalists in Mumbai.

On Tuesday, President Biden said it’s his “hope and expectation” to share doses of coronavirus vaccine with India and other countries but did not specify when that might happen.