Military importing 23 oxygen plants from Germany
NEW DELHI: The Armed Forces Medical Services (AFMS) is importing mobile oxygen generation plants to address the oxygen crisis precipitated by the second wave of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), people familiar with the development said on Friday.
The AFMS is importing 23 mobile oxygen generation plants from Germany, and these will arrive within a week, said one of the officials cited above. “These plants will be deployed in AFMS hospitals catering to Covid patients,” he said. The military and other wings of the defence ministry have been ordered to respond on war footing to fight the outbreak that has so far claimed nearly 185,000 lives, as reported by Hindustan Times.
From setting up Covid hospitals to ramping up oxygen production and airlifting of medical staff and oxygen containers to liaising with state governments to help them deal with the rising number of daily cases, the armed forces, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and defence public sector undertakings (DPSUs) are working overtime for Covid-19 relief.
The DRDO is among the organisations that are at the forefront of fighting the second deadly wave of Covid-19 that has ripped through the country. A new Covid hospital set up by the DRDO in Ahmedabad will be functional from Saturday. The hospital has been readied in less than 10 days.
The Dhanvantri Covid Hospital will have a capacity of 900 beds including 150 intensive care unit (ICU) beds, said a second official. The remaining 750 beds also have provision for oxygen, he added. The DRDO has set up the facility in collaboration with Gujarat government. It has so far set up or is in the process of setting up state-of-the-art Covid hospitals in six cities to treat more than 3,100 critical patients.
The DRDO has set up a 500bed hospital in Delhi and converted an ESIC hospital into a 500-bed Covid facility in Patna.