AP PHOTOS: Mumbai doctor recounts harrowing COVID-19 surge

MUMBAI, India -- Dr. Kedar Toraskar hasn't been able to sleep much over the last few months. His mind would constantly turn to the young COVID-19 patients fighting for their lives in the ICU ward he oversees at Wockhardt Hospital in the western Indian city of Mumbai. The recent coronavirus surge in India affected young people on a scale his team of critical care doctors hadn’t previously seen, Toraskar said. “We saw a lot of deaths, a lot of young people who succumbed to the disease,” he said. “It was really, truly very depressing.” India is slowly emerging from the darkest days of the pandemic. After declining last year, cases began surging in March, surpassing 400,000 new infections per day in May. The impact was immediate -- hospitals were overwhelmed with patients struggling to breathe. Demand for oxygen outran supply. Television news ran stories of patients dying on stretchers waiting outside hospital gates and dying at home before test results could even confirm they had caught the virus. The country’s health infrastructure collapsed.