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BLACKSBURG, Va. – Life is starting to get back to normal here in the U.S. while countries like India are a stark contrast in their fight against coronavirus.
In the last 24 hours, the country had more than 260,000 new cases and a record of more than 4,300 deaths. Active cases are decreasing but deaths are still rising and hospitals are still swamped.
Somnath Mukherji got emotional just talking to 10 News about what’s happening in India. He is the development coordinator for a volunteer-driven U.S. organization known as AID, the Association for India’s Development. He’s there now, fighting to save lives during the second wave of COVID-19.
“In hindsight when we look at the peak (in 2020) it doesn’t even look like anything, it looks like a bump compared to today’s peak,” said Mukherji.
The crisis in India comes as no surprise to Ranit Mukherjee, a doctoral student at Virginia Tech and member of the Bengali Students’ Association.
“…Because all of us are coming from India and we have family and friends there so it’s like constant news to us like it’s happening in your neighborhood but the global media only notices when it goes really bad,” said Mukherjee.
From the start of the pandemic the association has raised relief funds and in the last few months started collecting oxygen concentrators and machines used for sleep disorders like CPAPs or BiPAPs to send to India.
