Capital O2 mess: Shoddy supply, missing tankers

NEW DELHI: The Centre’s inability to earmark a 700 metric tonne (MT) quota of medical oxygen for the national capital, and the Delhi government’s failure to arrange for cryogenic tankers to effectively pick up supplies, continue to remain key hurdles to ensuring an adequate amount of the life-saving gas, as hospitals on Monday continued to make desperate appeals for uninterrupted flow to save critically ill patients.

The Supreme Court on Sunday

directed the Union government to ensure the deficit in oxygen supply to Delhi was met by midnight of May 3.

The order came amid distress calls from about half-adozen hospitals about their dwindling stocks and a day after 12 people died at a private hospital when their oxygen support ran perilously low. But it was unclear til late on Monday evening if this would be met.

“Demand is more than the capacity. We meet it by dipping into our stocks. We can’t ramp up too much more than that. Small plants in hospitals don’t really help that much,” a member of one of the empowered groups on the pandemic situation said, when asked about the supply to Delhi.

Delhi’s daily medical oxygen supply has been significantly less than the Centre’s allocated quantity of 590MT.

At the same time, the Delhi government’s plan to import 18 cryogenic tankers from Bangkok and 21 oxygen generation plants from France has been delayed due to “technical and administrative” reasons, a senior government official said on condition of anonymity.