Delhi hospitals close new admissions citing O2 shortage

New Delhi: As the oxygen crisis continues to loom in the Capital, several hospitals across the city are now having to either discharge patients, ask family members to look for their oxygen cylinders and even close all new admissions, citing a lack of adequate resources.

While the larger hospitals such as GTB, LNJP, Max hospitals, Sir Ganga Ram were suffering under acute shortage of oxygen for the last week, the supply at these facilities has resumed somewhat intermittently with government officials constantly responding to SOS messages.

But smaller hospitals in the city are now having to face the brunt of the crisis, with the Dharamveer Solanki Hospital on Sunday also raising an SOS alert for oxygen shortage. Its director, Dr Pankaj Solanki, said that doctors were desperately looking for cylinders and some patients were even asked to get admitted to other hospitals.

In addition to this, on Sunday, Fortis Escorts hospital in Okhla, put up a signboard outside its emergency ward, saying it had run out of medical oxygen and would not be able to take new admissions.

"We had timely escalated this impending situation to all authorities and are waiting for promised supplies since yesterday. At the moment we are out of options and suspending new admissions and ER services till the situation improves. We are trying to manage admitted patients to the best of our abilities," the notice placed at the hospital reads.

But soon after this alert was publicised in the media, AAP Leader Raghav Chadha assured that a tanker with reserve supplies was on its way to the hospitals.

Similarly, just 150 metres away from Fortis, the Holy Family Hospital is also reeling under unprecedented pressure, with the medical superintendent Dr Sumit Ray saying their oxygen requirements had gone up at least 10-12 times in comparison to regular needs and that since the hospital had to be retro-fitted for more beds, the main oxygen supply does not reach the new beds and these patients will need cylinders.

Despite this, their hospital is full and all day the emergency ward is flooded with waiting Covid patients, who are given minimal treatment or as much as possible before being discharged.

In fact, even at Jaipur Golden Hospital, where 20 Covid patients died on Saturday due to a shortage of oxygen, new admissions have been closed for the time being as the hospital continues to live on hours of supply at a time.