900k on O2 support, says Harsh Vardhan

NEW DELHI: With Covid-19 cases surging across the country, Union health minister Harsh Vardhan said on Saturday that 1.34% of the patients were in intensive care units, with 0.39% on ventilators. Around 3.70% of the Covid-19 patients were on oxygen support, the government’s data has revealed.

In his virtual address at the 25th meeting of the Group of Ministers (GoM) to discuss the pandemic situation, the minister said nearly 500,000 patients have been admitted to intensive care units, with over 170,000 on ventilator support, while 900,000 people are currently on oxygen support.

The country has reported over 400,000 daily new cases of the viral infection for four days now.

The health minister also informed that the country has ramped up Covid-19 testing to 250,000 tests from 150,000 tests a day as on April 9. “Our testing capacity from 15 lakh per day (last meeting on April 9) has been increased to 25 lakh per day right now,” he said.

He also highlighted that there was a “glaring gap” in the number of people who have received the first dose and those who have received the second dose of the vaccine against Covid-19.

“We can see the glaring gap between those who got their first dose and those who got their second dose. The government has been pursuing this very aggressively with the states and also trying to publicly motivate everyone to get the second dose. We have asked the states to utilise the vaccines given by the Centre in the ratio of 70:30 for second dose,” he said.

At the meeting, road transport and highways secretary said that the domestic production of oxygen has been ramped up to 9,400 MT a day. The domestic production capacity was only 5,700MT in August last year.