Kathmandu, April 26. The US and Britain rushed ventilators and vaccine materials to India Monday as the country battles a catastrophic, record-breaking coronavirus wave that has overwhelmed hospitals and set crematoriums working at full capacity.

A surge in recent days has seen patients’ families taking to social media to beg for oxygen supplies and locations of available hospital beds, and has forced the capital New Delhi to extend a week-long lockdown.

The country of 1.3 billion has become the latest hotspot of a pandemic that has killed more than three million people, even as richer countries take steps towards normality with quickening innoculation programmes.

“He was gasping for air, we removed his face mask and he was crying and saying ‘save me, please save me’,” Mohan Sharma, 17, said of his father, who died outside a Delhi hospital.

“But I could do nothing. I just watched him die,” Sharma told AFP.

France, Germany and Canada have also pledged support to India, which has driven increases in global case numbers in recent days, recording 352,991 new infections and 2,812 deaths on Monday — its highest tolls since the start of the pandemic.

The first of nine airline container-loads of supplies from the UK, including ventilators and oxygen concentrators, was set to arrive in India early Tuesday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said, pledging the UK would do “all it can” to help.

The White House said it was making vaccine-production material, therapeutics, tests, ventilators and protective equipment immediately available to India.

But it did not mention whether it would send any of the 30 million AstraZeneca vaccine doses it currently holds in surplus, sparking accusations of hoarding.

India’s Hindu-nationalist government is facing growing criticism for allowing mass gatherings across the country in recent weeks, with millions attending religious festivals and thronging political rallies.

On Sunday, Twitter confirmed it withheld dozens of tweets — including from opposition lawmakers — critical of the government’s handling crisis after a legal demand from New Delhi.