INDIA – The International Lutheran Council (ILC) is encouraging Christians around the world to continue to remember India in prayer as the country struggles with a deadly wave of COVID-19.
On April 5, India reported another 387,000 new cases of the disease, continuing a two-week trend of new infections exceeding 300,000 per day. Only a day earlier, on April 4, India officially became the second country to pass the 20 million mark of confirmed cases overall; approximately 3.5 million of these cases are estimated to still be active. The official death toll sits at 226,000, but there are suggestions the actual number of fatalities may be much higher.
The most recent wave has proven particularly deadly, with hospitals having to turn people away due to a lack of supplies to care for the infected—notably, oxygen and hospital beds. Media have reported people dying outside hospital doors, unable to gain admittance, as well as funeral homes and crematoriums overwhelmed with the dead.
Among those suffering in the midst of the crisis are members of the India Evangelical Lutheran Church (IELC). “We are losing our dear ones every day,” writes IELC President Y. Suvisesha Muthu. “Our members, young and old, are dying almost daily. Many have tested positive and are waiting to get treatment.”
Two of the church’s pastors have died in this wave so far, as has a retired pastor. Others are sick. Several faculty members of the IELC’s Concordia Theological Seminary, Nagercoil are receiving treatment for COVID-19, with the seminary’s principal currently in critical care.
“The situation is very grave,” noted Rev. Dr. Timothy Quill, General Secretary of the International Lutheran Council. “We call on Lutherans worldwide to lift up India in prayer, that God would provide relief from the current crisis. In particular, pray that God would continue to bless the work of medical providers in the country, that He would provide assistance from within and without the country in the provision of needed medical supplies, and that He would bless the rollout of India’s vaccination program. May God have mercy on a suffering people.”
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