Indians struggled to register online for a mass vaccination drive set to begin next month as the country's toll from the coronavirus surged past 200,000 yesterday, 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 and fuelling an increasingly urgent response from allies overseas sending equipment.

The last 24 hours 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.

Experts believe the official tally vastly underestimates the actual toll in a nation of 1.35 billion, however.

"The situation is horrific, absolutely terrible, according to what I see. 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.

As record infections spark severe shortages of the gas in hospitals, desperate patients are flocking to tents outside a Gurdwara -- a Sikh place of worship -- in Ghaziabad city, arriving in cars, rickshaws and even ambulances.

"We needed treatment but we couldn't find any beds in Delhi's hospitals," Verma, 32, told AFP as his mother, 58-year-old Poonam, was connected to an oxygen concentrator.

The World Health Organization said in its weekly epidemiological update that India accounted for 38% of the 5.7 million cases reported worldwide to it last week.

Early modelling 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, it said.

The variants make for a perilous cocktail coursing through the world's second most populous country where people live in close proximity, often six to a room.

The UN health agency also said the B.1.617 variant had as of Tuesday been detected in over 1,200 sequences uploaded to the GISAID open-access database "from at least 17 countries".

Offering a glimmer hope, the co-founder of BioNTech -- which developed a Covid-19 vaccine with Pfizer -- said he is confident the shot works against the variant.

"We are still testing the Indian variant, but the Indian variant has mutations that we have already tested for and which our vaccine works against, so I am confident," said Ugur Sahin.

White House Chief Medical Adviser Anthony Fauci said on Tuesday Covaxin, India's home-grown Covid vaccine produced by Bharat Biotech, has been found to neutralise the B.1.617 variant.

SEARCH FOR VACCINES

Experts said India's best hope to fight the pandemic was to vaccinate its vast population and yesterday it opened registrations for everyone above the age of 18 to be given jabs.

But the country, which is one of the world's biggest producers of vaccines, does not yet have the stocks for an estimated 600 million people becoming eligible, on top of ongoing effort to inoculate the elderly and people with other medical conditions.

People who tried to register said they failed.

"Tried registering and blocking a slot for vaccination," said Shourya Agarwal on Twitter. Failed multiple times."

Even those already eligible were struggling to find doses, reports Reuters.

"They are telling us that injections are not available, as vaccines have not arrived," said Mumbai resident Pushpa Goswami at a vaccination centre. She said she registered three days ago.

Meanwhile, Serum Institute of India (SII) yesterday announced a reduction in Covid-19 vaccine price for Indian states. SII, the maker of Covishield, said it now plans to sell to states to Rs 300 per dose as against the earlier Rs 400.

EMERGENCY AID

President Joe Biden said the United States is sending a whole series of help that India needs in its battle against Covid-19.

"We are sending immediately a whole series of help... including providing for those remdesivir and other drugs that are able to deal with this," Biden told reporters at a White House news conference on Tuesday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday told Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a phone call that Moscow will deliver emergency aid to India.

The neighbouring Pakistan recorded more than two hundred deaths in a day for the first time since the start of the pandemic.

The South Asia head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Udaya Regmi, said the world was entering a critical phase of the pandemic and needed to have vaccinations available for all adults as soon as possible.

In US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)  said on Tuesday fully vaccinated Americans don't need to wear masks outdoors anymore unless they are in a big crowd of strangers, and those who are unvaccinated can go without a face covering outside in some cases, too.