Delhi hospitals get O2 till morning; 'beg, borrow, steal': HC tells Centre

New Delhi: After the Delhi High Court, in an emergency plea filed by Max hospitals seeking oxygen supply for patients, directed the Centre to ensure immediate supply is delivered safely and in time, the Union government assured the court that it would provide unobstructed passage to the supplies heading to Delhi and also give police protection to the vehicles.

Hours before the hearing, the Centre on Wednesday upped the quota from 387 MT liquid oxygen to 480 MT per day amid fervent pleas from Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to increase the city's oxygen supply quota as the Capital gets a breather till Thursday morning, with more than 10 major hospitals already having called for help through SOS messages on Wednesday.

While Kejriwal thanked the Centre on Twitter soon after the hike in quota, the Delhi government has maintained that the city, at the current spread of infection, needs at least 700 MT of liquid oxygen. In fact, according to court filings by the Delhi government, the requirement is close to over 900 MT per day.

The emergency measure to increase oxygen supply to Delhi, albeit not to the levels the Delhi government had sought, came after several large private hospitals in the city ran out of oxygen on Wednesday morning, with their suppliers — mostly based in Haryana's Faridabad saying that local authorities had occupied the supply facility and were not allowing the tankers to leave the state.

One such SOS message came from Max Hospitals, alerting that all six of its hospitals in Delhi and Gurugram were low on oxygen, some even as low as just two hours of supply, and that replenishment would be mandatory to avoid a crisis.

But around 8 pm on Wednesday, when the Faridabad supplier was yet to restore its supply, Max hospitals, through its parent company Balaji Medical and Research Centre filed an emergency plea in the Delhi High Court seeking immediate oxygen supply.

Fuming over the Centre's indifference to the ground reality, the bench of Justices Vipin Sanghi and Rekha Palli ordered the Centre to immediately ensure that the supply to these hospitals is ensured, where around 1,400 patients urgently need it.

During the hearing, the court bashed the Centre for not waking up sooner and pulled it up for not immediately diverting industrial oxygen for medical use in Delhi. The bench went as far as to say: "We don't care, beg, borrow, steal or requisition new plants if you want."

While the hearing ended only after a few tankers had already left from the Faridabad supplier's (Linde India) facility for Max hospitals and an assurance from the Delhi government through Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia that the hospitals would survive Wednesday night, it passed a slew of directions to ensure the promised supply of 480 MT oxygen reaches the city hospitals.

During the hearing, the court said it was the Centre's responsibility to ensure no law and order situation arises and that the entire supply for Delhi reaches hospitals safely and in time. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta assured the court that police protection will be given to supplies.

At the hearing, the court also suggested that all industrial units be shut down if required and the oxygen be diverted to medical use. The court said: "Heavens won't fall apart. There is commercial interest and then there is human life." But as Max got its supply restored for the night and the high court is expected to take up the matter on Thursday first thing, SOS messages from other hospitals kept pouring throughout Wednesday.

One message from Manipal Hospital CEO Pramod Alagharu said an IAS officer had "taken control over Faridabad Linde plant and is presently not allowing supplies to be sent to our Manipal Delhi Unit." Reports of the same supplier not being able to send tankers to St Stephan's, Holy Family and Irene hospitals also came in. Interestingly, moments before the SOS messages started coming, Haryana Health Minister Anil Vij had claimed that Delhi had "looted" an oxygen tanker from Haryana to supply to its hospitals and that he had ordered "police protection" for the suppliers.

What Vij was referring to was that on Tuesday too the city faced an acute oxygen shortage, with GTB Hospital's stocks lasting only for hours. At that point, its supplier INOX in Modinagar, UP alleged that they were not being allowed out of the state. After several calls to senior Union ministers, Deputy CM said he was able to get the tankers to GTB.

Significantly, both Gurugram and Noida have also now started to face oxygen shortages.

Moreover, according to sources in the Delhi government, of the increased quota of oxygen assigned to Delhi by the Centre, two suppliers will be sending 70 MT and 30 MT from Odisha and West Bengal respectively, which will take over 72 hours to reach the Capital. "And the 140 MT oxygen due on Wednesday was yet to leave from Haryana as of 8 pm," they added.

One source said: "It's indeed unfortunate that states like Haryana and Uttar Pradesh are curtailing the supply of life-saving oxygen to Delhi. Just as the Haryana government, the Uttar Pradesh government has illegally captured the oxygen production plants, depriving Delhi of oxygen. What's worse is that they're indulging in this insensitive act despite clear orders from the High Court."

Meanwhile, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia in an evening press conference on Wednesday said: "This morning, several Delhi hospitals ran out of oxygen because it was supposed to come from a plant in Faridabad, Haryana. However, a district official reached the plant and stopped the life-saving oxygen vehicles from entering Delhi, claiming instead that going forward, this oxygen will stay with Haryana. When the Centre decides on the issue of oxygen, no state government should have the authority to stop the supply of oxygen."

But as the fate of almost 18,000 critical Covid patients in Delhi's hospitals hangs in the balance, Covid emergency wards in the city have completely broken down in the face of increasing cases, with patients, their kin, doctors and infrastructure, failing almost at every hospital on a daily basis and patients dying before even being examined for admission — gasping for breath.

Delhi on Wednesday reported over 24,000 new infections and 249 more deaths from the virus as active cases in the city hit 85,364.