Priyanka Chopra Jonas urges fans to help India amid COVID-19 crisis

As a second wave of COVID-19 wreaks havoc on India, the death toll from the virus topped 200,000 on Wednesday and the country posted an all-time high of 360,960 new cases, bringing the total to nearly 18 million. Hospitals in India are reporting oxygen shortages and and social media was ablaze with SOS requests for oxygen, hospital beds and medicine.

Actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas posted a plea on her own social media account, urging followers to care about the desperate situation in her home country. "Why do we need to care? Why is it so urgent right now?" the 38-year-old actress said. "I'm sitting in London and hearing from my friends and family in India about how hospitals are at capacity, there are no rooms in ICUs, ambulances are too busy, oxygen supply is less." Chopra Jonas also mentioned the "crematoriums having mass cremations because the volume of deaths is so much." On Tuesday, families of the dead queued up at overworked crematoriums in Delhi to register for the last rites for their loved ones. One of the biggest crematoriums in the Indian capital's Gazipur area was creating additional spots to burn pyres, as bodies laid in waiting.