The Supreme Court ordered the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to come up with a national oxygen distribution plan as coronavirus cases continue to set records.

By Emily Schmall

NEW DELHI — Indian hospitals and government leaders scrambled for supplies of oxygen and other emergency aid on Friday, as the country reported another record number of new coronavirus infections and a rising death toll that has strained the country’s resources.

India recorded more than 330,000 new cases in 24 hours, the health ministry said on Friday, the second consecutive day that the country has set a global record for daily infections. The reported death toll on Friday was more than 2,200, also a new high for the country.

About half of the cases in Delhi, the capital city of more than 20 million people, are testing positive for a more contagious variant of the virus, first detected last year in India, that is afflicting younger people, said a health ministry official, Sujeet Singh.

It is unclear to what extent the variant is driving the surge in cases around the country, with large gatherings of unmasked people and widespread neglect of preventive measures also suspected.

As India’s catastrophic second wave of the coronavirus deepened on Friday, Canada joined Britain, Hong Kong, Singapore and New Zealand in barring travelers from the country. The U.S. State Department advised people against going to India after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention raised the country’s risk level to its highest measure.

“Demand for hospital beds and medical supplies have taxed the health care system to capacity in many cities, and critical care bed space is severely limited,” the travel advisory said.

With the mutant strain of the virus racing through Delhi, the capital territory’s government has imposed a weeklong lockdown. That has stranded thousands of people who rely on daily wages, leaving many to camp on the banks of the Yamuna River, where they survive on a Sikh temple’s twice-daily food deliveries.

In Maharashtra, which includes Mumbai and is one of India’s worst-hit states, a hospital fire attributed to a faulty air-conditioning unit killed at least 13 Covid-19 patients on Friday. Two days before, at least 22 patients were killed in a hospital in the city of Nashik, also in Maharashtra, after a leak cut off their oxygen supplies.

Facing a barrage of criticism for his government’s handling of the second wave, Prime Minister Narendra Modi canceled plans to travel to West Bengal for a campaign rally ahead of an election in that state.

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