A small private hospital in India's most populous state is being charged under the National Security Act for sounding the alarm over a lack of oxygen
Our team travelled from New Delhi more than 200 kilometres to Agra and then several hundred more kilometres onto Lucknow - and all along the route, we found thousands of people flouting the lockdown and the night-time curfew only being patchily enforced.Although medics believe the situation is stabilising, there's still an unknown number of infections and deaths throughout this large state which dwarfs whole countries in terms of population.
A resistance to testing due to fear of isolating; the lack of access to hospitals or even clinics and an absence of co-ordinated monitoring of the COVID deaths has meant widespread scepticism about the official statistics.Several doctors we spoke to from a variety of hospitals - in Delhi, Agra and Lucknow - are telling us the same information all the time about the virus and the variants.
Of course, there are important caveats. All of this information is anecdotal but with a fast-changing and developing disease, those on the frontline - especially in- are anxious to share whatever they can glean about the disease and its changing make-up so others may be quicker to react or respond. More patients are suffering from diarrhoea and eye infections and a very small number also suffer renal problems.