Hospitals sound alarm again with oxygen perilously short

NEW DELHI: The oxygen crisis in the national capital worsened on Saturday, with hospitals across the city sounding the alarm as their stocks ran low, on a day when at least 12 people died at Batra Hospital after an 80-minute disruption in oxygen supply.

Saturday’s crisis was largely due to another shortfall in Delhi’s supplies, with the Capital once again not receiving its allocated quota of medical oxygen. Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on the day said Delhi received only 312MT out of its allocated share of 490MT on Friday. This shortfall, he said, has held up the state’s plan to increase the number of beds for Covid-19 patients.

Among the hospitals that ran perilously short of oxygen on Saturday were the state government-run Guru Teg Bahadur and Rajiv Gandhi hospitals. Officials said the two received emergency supplies in the “nick of time.”

“We had all our faculty members and resident doctors lined up to give oxygen to patients using small cylinders and even manually in case the hospital ran out. The tanker arrived just in time,” said a senior doctor from GTB Hospital.

A doctor from Rajiv Gandhi hospital, which is treating 350 patients on critical care beds, said, “We only have ICU beds in the hospital. If the oxygen were to run out, we would not have been able to save all the patients. We have a hand-tomouth situation with oxygen every day.”

Though the hospital has been allocated nearly 13MT of oxygen a day, officials said it doesn’t receive that amount.

Oxygen quotas have been “rationed” due to supply shortages, said several hospitals.

“The biggest bottleneck is that Delhi requires 700MT of oxygen daily but was allocated 490MT, which never comes. Our requirement (depending on the number of ICU and non-icu beds) was assessed to be 6.5MT but we were allocated only 4.9MT because of this shortage. In the meantime, because we have more patients, our needs have gone up to 7MT. We can’t refuse patients crying out for help,” said Dr Sudhanshu Bankata, executive director, Batra Hospital.

With the government maintaining a reserve of 11MT to resolve crises in hospitals, and allocating 16.8MT for refilling cylinders for hospitals, ambulances, and individuals, the quota of the hospitals had to be reduced further by 7MT, as per an April 29 order on oxygen quotas.

Dr CM Bhagat, medical director of Bhagat Chandra hospital in Palam, said, “I am managing with just 50% of the quota.”