Hosps still struggling with oxygen supplies
New Delhi: Two hospitals here, including VIMHANS, treating COVID-19 patients sent out alerts on Thursday over shortage of oxygen.
VIMHANS hospital in Delhi had said that it had run out of the liquid oxygen supply. The hospital is now using oxygen cylinders for the patients. About 203 patients are admitted in the hospital. "No one from INOX is responding to our calls and messages. We are helpless," hospital administration had said.
Meanwhile, at Delhi's Madhukar Rainbow Children Hospital in Malviya Nagar the situation was dire when hospital sent out a SOS saying they just have 20 minutes of liquid oxygen left.
On Thursday, the Delhi government also asked the Centre to raise the city's daily quota of medical oxygen from 490 MT to 976 MT as thousands of beds for COVID-19 patients will be ready in 10 days.
In a letter to Union minister Piyush Goyal, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia also urged the Centre for providing transportation facilities for bringing oxygen from the manufacturing units in other states to the national capital.
With the additional beds coming into operation, the estimated requirement of medical oxygen per day will be 976 MT in Delhi, he said.
"The people and the Government of NCT of Delhi will be extremely grateful to the Government of India if it can kindly increase the allocation from the present 490 MT per day to 976 MT per day, preferably from nearby oxygen plants, reducing the turnaround time," Sisodia wrote to Goyal.
Major hospitals like Ganga Ram who were on a tight oxygen supply have started getting enough to get by on a daily basis, small hospitals and nursing homes are still struggling.
While immediate intervention is taking place, but with the flow in number of patients high, hospitals are running out of beds and oxygen on hourly basis. There is shortage of beds in hospital due to which various covid centres have been opened up, which however are filling up fast. Bed facilities for covid patients were opened at common wealth behind Akshardham filled immediately with officials not responding to
calls. "I went there to check if any bed was available but it is full," Benjamin, who hails from Delhi, said.
However, Delhi government has said there are 5,000 beds are ready at the Radha Soami Satsang Beas complex in Chhatarpur, but only 300 are functional, while 1,000 beds at Sant Nirankari Mission and 1,500 at Sawan Kripal Ruhani Mission are ready but not functional due to an oxygen shortage, Sisodia said.
At present, there are 16,272 non-ICU oxygen beds and 4,866 ICU beds in the national capital, Sisodia said. Meanwhile, outside hospitals people were still struggling with oxygen and had to themselves go to arrange oxygen cylinder. A volunteer in Shaheen Bagh said that there are more than 200 SOS calls for oxygen cylinders.
