India Govt eases oxygen shortage
Court ruling leads to more life-saving supplies for hospitals in New Delhi
Under order by the Supreme Court, India’s Government yesterday agreed to provide more medical oxygen to hospitals in the capital city of New Delhi, potentially easing a two-weekold shortage that worsened the exploding coronavirus crisis.
Government officials also denied reports that they have been slow in distributing life-saving medical supplies donated from abroad.
The Government raised the oxygen supply to 730 tonnes from 490 tonnes a day in New Delhi as ordered by the Supreme Court. The court intervened after 12 Covid-19 patients, including a doctor, died last week at the city’s Batra Hospital when it ran out of medical oxygen for 80 minutes.
On Thursday 11 other Covid-19 patients died when pressure in an oxygen supply line stopped working at a government medical college hospital in Chengalpet in southern India, possibly because of a faulty valve, the
Times of India newspaper reported.
Hospital authorities said they fixed the oxygen line last week, but that the consumption of oxygen had doubled since then, the newspaper said.
The number of new confirmed cases in India yesterday surpassed 400,000 for the second time since the devastating surge began last month.
The 412,262 new cases pushed the official tally of confirmed cases to more than 21 million. The Health Ministry also reported 3980 deaths over the past 24 hours, boosting the total to 230,168. Experts believe both figures are an undercount.
K. Vijay Raghvan, a principal scientific adviser to the Government, said the explosion of cases was “a very critical time for the country”.
Anthony Fauci, US President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, suggested a complete shutdown may be needed two to four weeks to help ease the surge of infections.
“As soon as the cases start coming down, you can vaccinate more people and get ahead of the trajectory of the outbreak of the pandemic,” Fauci said in an interview with the Indian television CNN News18 news channel.
He suggested India should use its military to erect field hospitals that could ease the pressure on hospitals.
Fauci also said it appears at least two types of virus variants are circulating in India. B117, the UK variant, tends to be concentrated in New Delhi and the 617 variant is focused in the worst-hit Maharashtra state.
“Both of those have increasing capability of transmitting better and more efficiently than the original
Wuhan strain a year ago,” Fauci said.
Demand for hospital oxygen has increased sevenfold since last month, a government official said, as India struggles to set up large oxygen plants and take oxygen to where it is needed. Ships carrying oxygen are bound for India from Bahrain and Kuwait in the Persian Gulf, officials said.
Most hospitals don’t have plants to generate oxygen for patients, As a result, they typically rely on liquid oxygen, which can be stored in cylinders and moved in tanker trucks. But supplies in hard-hit places like New Delhi have run critically short.
Dr Himaal Dev, chief of the critical care unit at Apollo Hospital in Bengaluru, in the south, said Covid patients in intensive care need at least 10-15 litres of oxygen a minute because of reduced lung function.
Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said India has enough oxygen but faces capacity constraints moving it to where it is needed. Most oxygen is produced in the east, while the demand has risen in north and west.
The outbreak has also spread to neighbouring countries.
In Nepal, thousands rushed to leave the country ahead of a halt to all international flights because of spiking Covid-19 cases.
Nepal’s main cities and towns have been in lockdown since last month.
It recorded its highest number of daily infections, 8659, on Thursday and 58 deaths, which was also a record.
In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi yesterday told top officials to ramp up the vaccination drive.
India, with nearly 1.4 billion people, has so far given 162 million doses but is faces vaccine shortages.
The US, Britain, Germany and other nations are rushing medicine, rapid virus tests and oxygen and material India needs to boost domestic production of vaccines.
India’s vaccine production is expected to get a boost with the United States supporting a waiver of intellectual property protections for Covid-19 vaccines.
Vaccine components from the US that have arrived in India will allow the manufacturing of 20 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, said Daniel B. Smith, the senior diplomat at the US Embassy in New Delhi.
Last month, Adar Poonawalla, CEO of the Serum Institute of India, the world’s biggest vaccine maker, appealed to Biden to lift the embargo on the US export of raw materials.
The Government meanwhile described as “totally misleading” Indian media reports that it took seven days to develop a procedure for distributing urgent medical supplies that started arriving from other countries on April 25.