As COVID-19 cases and deaths exploded in India in April and May, New Delhi's premier Sir Ganga Ram Hospital and several others ran so short of oxygen that many patients in the capital suffocated.
When Reuters visited the hospital on Friday, its last coronavirus patient was readying to leave after recovery — a remarkable turnaround health experts attribute to growing levels of immunity from natural infection and vaccinations.
But hospitals have learned from bitter experience during the second COVID-19 wave, when funeral pyres burned nonstop and bodies littered the banks of the holy Ganges river, as India braces for another possible surge in infections.