Coronavirus spreads to Delhi’s diplomatic missions
37 industries have been identified for conversion of plants
India continued to struggle to contain the spread of Covid-19 disease as close to four lakh fresh cases and over 3,500 deaths were reported on Sunday.
Hospitals and patients continue to beg for beds and oxygen while state governments keep urging the Centre to increase their quota and provide more oxygen.
Several hospitals in Delhi and some embassies sent SOS messages for oxygen and Delhi MLAs and the Congress’ youth wing leaders rushed cylinders in time. “The government’s oxygen reserves are extremely limited due to reduced oxygen supply to Delhi, but we are doing everything possible to avert any untoward incident,” tweeted Delhi MLA Raghav Chaddha after receiving an SOS message from the hospital that has neo-natal care and premature babies on oxygen. Later, the hospital got 10 more cylinders from its vendors.
Several diplomatic missions are now reporting Covid infection among their staffers. Slovenia, the US, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, New Zealand and Tanzania are some of the embassies and high commissions that have reported Covid cases. Some have been cured while some are still under treatment.
On Saturday, the Philippines embassy and on Sunday the New Zealand
high commission were provided oxygen by Congress workers much to the dislike of the ministry of external affairs as the
Opposition slammed MEA for not doing enough for the diplomatic corps. The New Zealand HC had tagged youth Congress leader B.V. Srinivas seeking help.
The Ministry of External Affairs reacted by saying that the chief of protocol and heads of divisions are in touch with all high commissions, embassies and that the MEA is responding to their medical demands, especially those related to Covid.
“This includes facilitating their hospital treatment. Given the pandemic situation, all are urged not to hoard essential supplies, including oxygen,” MEA said.
Later, the New Zealand high commission said they were trying all sources to arrange for oxygen cylinders urgently, and “our appeal has unfortunately been misinterpreted, for which we are sorry.”
Meanwhile, AIIMS director Dr Randeep Guleria said that the country needs to go under stricter lockdown to break the chain of transmission and the Haryana government announced a week-long complete lockdown in the state from Monday morning. The state had imposed a weekend lockdown in nine districts — Gurgaon, Faridabad, Panchkula, Sonipat, Rohtak, Karnal, Hisar, Sirsa, and Fatehabad – from Friday evening till Monday morning.
Union home ministry is expected to come out with fresh guidelines for setting up “micro and mini containment zones” in states which are consistently reporting a double-digit positivity rate.
Given the grim situation and constantly increasing demand, Prime Minister Narendra Modi called a meeting to explore ways to increase oxygen supplies. “Considering the requirement of medical oxygen amidst the Covid19 pandemic situation, the government of India explored the feasibility of conversion of existing nitrogen plants to produce oxygen. Various such potential industries, wherein existing nitrogen plants may be spared for production of oxygen were identified,” Prime Minister’s Office said in a press note.
The process of converting the existing Pressure Swing Absorption (PSA) nitrogen plants for the production of oxygen was discussed. So far 14 industries have been identified where the conversion of plants is under progress.
Further, 37 nitrogen plants have been also identified with the help of industry associations.
It was discussed that many industries like steel plants, refineries with petrochemical units, industries using rich combustion process, power plants etc have oxygen plants which produce gaseous oxygen and this can be tapped for medical use.