Indians struggled to register online for a mass vaccination drive set to begin at the weekend as the country's toll from the coronavirus surged past 200,000 on Wednesday, worsened by shortages of hospital beds and medical oxygen.

The second wave of infections has seen at least 300,000 people test positive each day for the past week, overwhelming health facilities and crematoriums. Many countries, including China, have extended their hands to help the country whose hospitals are running out of oxygen supplies.

Read more: Countries offer COVID-19 support to India as hospitals swamped

China has expressed its willingness to help more than once. On Monday, 800 oxygen concentrators were airlifted from China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region to Delhi and 10,000 more will be sent in a week, the Chinese Embassy in Sri Lanka tweeted. Chinese associations and companies have also been responding to India's SOS calls. 

Deadliest day on record

Monday brought 360,960 new cases for the world's largest single-day total, taking India's tally of infections to nearly 18 million. It was also the deadliest day so far, with 3,293 fatalities carrying the toll to 201,187. However, experts believe the official tally vastly underestimates the actual toll in a nation of 1.35 billion. 

"The situation is horrific, absolutely terrible. Everyone is afraid, every single person. People are afraid that if I am talking to a person, maybe I won't get to talk to them tomorrow or in the near future," New Delhi resident Manoj Garg said.

Delhi state is reporting an average of one death from COVID-19 every four minutes, and ambulances have been taking the bodies of COVID-19 victims to makeshift crematorium facilities in parks and parking lots, where bodies burned on rows and rows of funeral pyres.

Mohammad Shameem, the head grave digger at Delhi's biggest graveyard, said that "earlier we had enough space here, but now there is no space left. Whatever little gaps we have left, we are trying to fill them up now."

Genesis hospital in the Delhi suburb of Gurgaon told families to take patients away because its supplies of life-saving oxygen were depleting fast, one family told Reuters.

"The hospital is trying to get oxygen but we are told we have to make alternate arrangements," said Anjali Cerejo, whose father had been admitted but now has to try to find another bed elsewhere.

Outside hospitals, people lined up on trolleys, and in cars and cycle rickshaws, with loved ones holding oxygen cylinders for them as they waited for a bed inside. The World Health Organization said in its weekly epidemiological update that India accounted for 38 percent of the 5.7 million cases reported worldwide last week.

Early modeling showed that the B.1.617 variant of the virus detected in India had a higher growth rate than other variants in the country, suggesting increased transmissibility.

(With inputs from Reuters)