Clinics seeking supplies as surge hits Afghanistan

Afghanistan’s is racing to ramp up supplies of oxygen as a deadly third surge of COVID19 worsens, a senior health official said Saturday.

The government is installing oxygen supply plants in 10 provinces where the increase in COVID cases in some areas is hovering around 65%, health ministry spokesman Ghulam Dastigir Nazari told the Associated Press.

Afghanistan’s 24hour infection count has also continued its upward climb from 1,500 at the end of May when the health ministry was already calling the surge “a crisis,” to more than 2,300 last week. Since the pandemic outbreak, Afghanistan has reported 101,906 cases and 4,122 deaths. But those figures are likely huge undercounts, registering only deaths in hospitals — not the far greater numbers who die at home.

Afghanistan received 900 oxygen cylinders from Iran on Saturday, part of 3,800 cylinders Tehran promised to deliver to Kabul. Afghanistan has even run out of empty cylinders, receiving a delivery of 1,000 last week from Uzbekistan.

Hospitals, meanwhile, are rationing their oxygen supplies. And Afghans desperate for oxygen are banging on the doors of the few oxygen suppliers in the Afghan capital.

For the country’s poor — over half of Afghanistan 36 million people according to World Bank figures — the situation has become desperate.

Abdul Wasi, whose wife has been sick for nearly 10 days, said on Friday as he waited outside an oxygen plant that a patient on a stretcher was carried to the door while the family begged for oxygen. The patient died.

Rahmat Gul / Associated Press People wait outside a privately owned oxygen plant in Kabul to get their cylinders refilled. Officials say Afghanistan is fast running out of oxygen as a surge of coronavirus worsens.