The doctors ordered to battle Covid in silence

“I don’t want to die right now,” were the last words of 28-year-old Sheikh Sumaira as she gasped for air in a Covid ward in Kashmir’s Shri Maharaja Hari Singh (SMHS) Hospital. On 21 May, after her oxygen levels dipped below 40 and with her family still scrambling to find her an ICU bed, she took her final breath.

Sumaira’s family say she was admitted to one of the biggest and best-equipped government hospitals in Srinagar, the largest city in India’s Jammu and Kashmir, just two days after testing positive for...