Like many in Canada’s South Asian community, Abhijit Roy is living in sorrow, pain and a sense of helplessness as he watches the COVID-19 pandemic devastate his homeland.

“The cases are alarming, and the concerns are overwhelming in my home country,” said Roy, who moved to Canada from India last year, just before the lockdown was announced.

“We are constantly worried about our friends and family and hoping that they stay safe and sound,” he told New Canadian Media.

Jose Villanueva, a Filipino migrant worker in Vancouver, said he does not know whether his family will survive the COVID-19 surge currently ravaging the Philippines.

“All we can do is pray and keep sending money home,” he said.

Many in the Asian diaspora In Canada are crushed by the burden of feeling helpless, as they know they can extend only limited help from this far, said Devrup Mitra, an aspiring legal professional who has lived in Canada for the last two years.

“There is a deep sense of remorse coupled with helplessness, given that the situation has spun out of control,” he told New Canadian Media.

As India's coronavirus catastrophe worsens, new waves of infections are fast engulfing a growing number of nations across South and Southeast Asia — with some grappling with their worst outbreaks since the pandemic began, said the World Health Organisation (WHO).

India, the second-most infected country after the United States, which has a caseload of 32.7 million, is in the grip of a second wave that began mid-February. The pandemic has claimed nearly 3.3 million lives worldwide since it first emerged in late 2019.

After sparking a health care crisis in India’s main urban centres of New Delhi and Mumbai, the surge in infections in rural regions and cities like information technology hub Bengaluru posed a fresh challenge for authorities. Hospitals reported shortages of beds and medical oxygen as patients flooded the facilities.

Medical experts say mass vaccination is the only solution to India’s Covid-19 crisis, but the inoculation drive that began in January has faltered.

India’s infection tally is close to 23 million with about 250,000 deaths as hospitals run out of oxygen and beds and morgues and crematoria overflow. As international aid pours into India, Experts have said the country’s actual figures could be far higher than reported.

The Philippines is battling one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in Asia with more than a million infections, including those caused by variants first detected in Britain and South Africa, and more than 18,000 deaths.

Manila on Monday said it stands to lose up to $6 billion in remittances this year as the COVID-19 pandemic that walloped the global economy might render about 400,000 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) jobless.

Last year, migrant workers sent more than $30 billion, including $1 billion from Filipino-Canadians to their families, or about 9 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

The economic hit will further impact efforts in the Philippines to curb the virus, where, like India, the healthcare system was not built to handle the COVID-19 case volumes of such magnitude.

"The Southeast Asia region reported over 2.7 million new cases and over 25,000 new deaths, a 19% and a 48% increase respectively compared to the previous week," the WHO said last Wednesday.

"India is currently driving the vast majority of this upward trend."

The rapid resurgence of the virus has placed enormous pressure on the health systems and medical supplies of these countries. Some have called for international assistance amid the deepening crisis.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) warned more must be done to stop the tragedy unfolding across Asia.

"We need to act now and we need to act fast to have any hope of containing this human catastrophe," Alexander Matheou, the IFRC's Asia-Pacific regional director, said in a statement. "This virus has no respect for borders and these variants are running rampant across Asia."

Beyond India and the Philippines, a growing number of Asian countries are also being ravaged by fresh coronavirus waves.

Sri Lanka has experienced a steep spike in coronavirus cases since mid-April, with infections quickly surpassing the peak of its previous wave in February.

In the Maldives, another neighbour of India, health authorities reported a daily record of 601 new Covid-19 cases, earlier this week

With its economy depending heavily on tourism, the Indian Ocean archipelago reopened its borders to international travellers last July after three months of lockdown, becoming the first country to welcome foreign tourists in the middle of the pandemic.

In Nepal, the situation is increasingly resembling the crisis in India, with skyrocketing infections, overwhelmed hospitals and pleas for help from other nations.

Despite being the first country to report a Covid-19 case outside of China in January last year, Thailand kept its infection numbers low in 2020 thanks to successful containment measures.

This year, however, it is facing a much bigger challenge. After containing a second wave that started last December, Thailand is struggling to curb a third wave of infections that has pushed daily caseloads and death tolls to unprecedented levels.

Cases are also surging in Cambodia, which until February had recorded one of the world's smallest coronavirus tallies and no fatalities.

Last week, Indonesia's Health Ministry confirmed two patients had the highly infectious coronavirus variant B.1.617, which was first identified in India. The country of 270 million has recorded a daily average of about 5,000 Covid-19 cases in the past week.

Authorities are concerned about the impact of the upcoming Mudik holiday, in which tens of millions of people travel to see their families in their hometowns to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan.

Malaysia has banned all interstate and inter-district travel for four weeks to curb the spread of Covid-19, the country's Bernama News Agency reported.

Malaysia's Ministry of Health has detected 46 Covid-19 clusters linked to cross-state activities since December 7. Those clusters account for 6,044 Covid-19 cases, Bernama reported. Malaysia has confirmed 440,677 coronavirus cases throughout the pandemic, according to Johns Hopkins University. At least 1,683 people have died.

– Mata Press Service with Agencies