India Inc rises to help battle new Covid wave

GROUPS INCLUDING TATA, RELIANCE, VEDANTA, ADANI, AMAZON PITCH IN WITH RESOURCES

MUMBAI: As Indi a suf fers w orld's worst outbreak of Covid cases, global and domestic cor porate giants are pitching i n resources from ai rlifting of medical equipment, making medical oxygen and setting up hospitals to supplement a public health system buckling under the w eight of surging infections and deaths.

Amazon and Goo gle as well as Indian firms T ata Sons , R eliance Industries Ltd and Adani Group have set up Co vid hospitals , air lifted cryogenic tank ers fr om a broad f or transporting medical o xygen and contributed funds t o aid the Co vid battle, accor ding to compan y announcements and industry sources.

India has r eported mor e t han 3,00,000 ne w dail y CO VID-19 cases for tw o w eeks, and r eached mor e than 4 lakh new daily cases over the weekend. Mor e t han 2.42 lakh people in India have died from the virus infection.

While Google CEO Sundar Pic hai last month announced $18 million donation, Amazon said 1,0 00 Medtronic ventilators will be delivered t o India. Micr osoft said it would w ork t o pr ovide India with 1,000 ventilators and 25,000 oxygen concentration devices.

Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries tweaked manufacturing at its oil refineries to produce over 1,0 00 tonnes of medical g rade liquid oxygen per day -- or over 11% of India's total production - meeting the needs of nearly every one in 10 patients. It has also set up 1,875 hospital beds f or fr ee tr eatment of Covid patients in Jamnagar in Gujarat and Mumbai.

India's largest steel mak er JSW has stopped making some steel products to pr oduce hundr eds of tonnes of oxygen for hard-hit areas. It said it was b uilding large COVID care cent res ar ound its plant s, so that they can be se rviced via a pipeline. While W ipro and Azim Premji F oundation con verted o ne IT facility in Pune into a 430-bed intermediary care Covid hospital, Infosys has set up a 100 r oom Co vid hospital in Bang aluru in association with Narayana Health, pr oviding free care to the poor.

Cipla supported Maharashtra government i n setti ng up Co vid isolation ward, Vedanta i s se tting up a field hospital in Delhi NCR and Adani Foundation set up hospitals in G ujarat and e ven converted the Adani V idya Mandir sc hool in Ahmedabad into an emerg ency COVID Car e Centr e with o xygen support and catered food.