21 dead, many missing Tauktae Cyclone COVID India | | was fighting the Coronavirus pandemic News

At least 21 people have been killed and nearly 100 more have disappeared after a monster cyclone struck western India, exacerbating misery for millions of other people suffering from a severe rise in coronavirus.

Hundreds of thousands of people were left without power when Cyclone Tauktae was blamed for climate change as one of the worst storms in the Arabian Sea hit the coast of Gujarat on Monday evening.

The cyclone collected gusts of 185 miles per hour, uprooting trees and tearing down power lines and mobile phone towers, while the interior vortex weakened somewhat.

A support vessel serving oil rigs hit by the massive waves off the coast of Mumbai sank and 96 of the 273 people on board were missing, the Indian Army said on Tuesday.

The defense ministry said 177 people had been rescued from the ship, and operations are expected to continue in “very difficult sea conditions” throughout the day.

Al Jazeera’s Pavni Mittal, from New Delhi, reported that the colossal cyclone – the largest in the region in decades – has killed at least 21 lives as wild winds blew through weak homes and uprooted trees and piles of electricity.

Although the cyclone was one of the hardest hit in the area, better forecasts than in recent years allowed for strong preparations and more than 200,000 people at risk were evacuated from their homes.

Mumbai authorities closed the airport for several hours on Monday and asked people to stay indoors as the huge waves hit the city’s waterfront.

COVID-19 disaster

The deadly weather system has hampered the response to a rising coronavirus that is killing at least 4,000 people in India and is pushing for a breakdown in the health care system.

“A lot of preparations for the cyclone were made considering that we are still in the middle of a second devastating wave of the pandemic,” Al Jazeera’s Mittal said.

Mumbai on Sunday transported about 600 COVID-19 patients to “safer places” in rural hospitals, near sea level, three meters (10 feet) above sea level near the coastal town of Diu.

In Gujarat, all coronavirus patients in hospitals five miles off the coast were also relocated. Doctors said a patient died in the village of Mahuva after being unable to move in time before the storm hit.

This photo provided by the National Disaster Force (NDRF) of India shows local workers pulling out a tree that has fallen in the rain and strong winds in the village of Mahuva in Bhavnagar (Gujarat). [National Disaster Response Force via AP]

Authorities there were confused that nearly 400 hospitals designated as COVID-19 and 41 nearby oxygen plants would cut off electricity.

Gujarat Prime Minister Vijay Rupani told reporters that COVID-19 had supplied generators to more than 1,000 hospitals in coastal towns.

The state also suspended vaccinations for two days. Mumbai did the same thing one day.

‘A terrible double blow’

“This cyclone is a devastating double blow to the millions of people in India who have suffered COVID-19 infection and death records,” said Udaya Regmi of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Moon Societies.

The organization said it is helping authorities evacuate people most at risk in coastal areas, providing first aid, masks “and promoting other critical COVID-19 preventive measures.”

When the trees fell, a truck loaded with oxygen cylinders crashed, causing them to approach the Tauktae cycle near Mahuva in Gujarat state. [Sam Panthaky/AFP]

Last May, more than 110 people were killed after the destruction of Amphan “super cyclone” in eastern India and Bangladesh in the Bay of Bengal.

The Arabian Sea had previously experienced fewer severe cyclones than the Bay of Bengal but rising water temperatures were global warming and this was changing, Roxy Mathew Koll, the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, told AFP.

“(The Arabian Sea) is one of the warmest basins in the world,” he said.

The effects were felt far away by the Nepalese authorities, about 2,000 kilometers from Gujarat, advising climbers on Mount Everest and other mountains to stop.

But more than 200 hikers did not issue the warnings and were heading for Everest, facing the summit this week, a government official at the base camp said.

“On the 24th I already decided to wait for the summit because the jet wind was in our region. Now the cyclone brings moisture and snow with it,” Dawa Steven Sherpa of the Asian Trekking expedition organizer told AFP.

The cyclone was expected to bring heavy rains to New Delhi, more than 1,200 kilometers off the coast of Gujarat, and to Uttarakhand on the Himalayan border with the Tibetans.