Hospitals' dire 'SOS' Twitter plea as country breaks Covid record
India's government has been forced to put oxygen tankers on special express trains as major hospitals in New Delhi begged on social media for more supplies to save Covid-19 patients who are struggling to breathe.
The development comes after more than a dozen people died when an oxygen-fed fire ripped through a coronavirus ward in a populous western state.
India’s underfunded health system is in tatters as the world’s worst coronavirus surge wears out the nation, which set a global record in daily infections for a second straight day with 332,730.
India has confirmed 16 million cases so far, second only to the United States, in a country of nearly 1.4 billion people.
India has recorded 2263 deaths in the past 24 hours for a total of 186,920.
The fire in a hospital intensive care unit killed 13 Covid-19 patients in the Virar area on the outskirts of Mumbai early on Friday (local time).
The situation is worsening by the day with hospitals taking to social media to plead with the government to replenish their oxygen supplies and threatening to stop admissions of new patients.
A major private hospital chain in the capital, Max Hospital, tweeted on Friday one of its facilities had one hour’s oxygen supply in its system and had been waiting for replenishment since early morning.
Two days earlier, they had filed a petition in the Delhi High Court saying they were running out of oxygen, endangering the lives of 400 patients, of which 262 were being treated for Covid-19.
The government started running Oxygen Express trains with tankers to meet the shortage at hospitals, Railroad Minister Piyush Goyal said.
SOS - Less than an hour's Oxygen supplies at Max Smart Hospital & Max Hospital Saket. Awaiting promised fresh supplies from INOX since 1 am. @drharshvardhan @msisodia @PMOIndia @ArvindKejriwal @PiyushGoyal @SatyendarJain over 700 patients admitted, need immediate assistance 🙏🏼
— Max Healthcare (@MaxHealthcare) April 23, 2021
The air force also airlifted oxygen tanks and other equipment to areas where they were needed, and flew doctors and nurses to New Delhi, the government said.
“We have surplus oxygen at plants which are far off from places where it is needed right now. Trucking oxygen is a challenge from these plants," Saket Tiku, president of the All India Industrial Gases Manufacturers Association, said.
“We have ramped up the production as oxygen consumption is rising through the roof. But we have limitations and the biggest challenge right now is transporting it to where it's urgently needed. ”
The increasing desperation in India comes after the Australian Government announced a reduction in the number of flights to Australia from India.
India's oxygen supply crisis
India's Supreme Court told Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government on Thursday it wanted a “national plan” for the supply of oxygen and essential drugs for the treatment of coronavirus patients.
The Press Trust of India news agency said the Defence Ministry would fly 23 mobile oxygen generating plants from Germany to help with the shortage.
Each plant will be able to produce 2400 litres of oxygen per hour, it said.
The New Delhi government issued a list of a dozen government and private hospitals facing an acute shortage of oxygen.
At another hospital in the capital, questions were raised about whether low oxygen supplies had caused deaths.
The Press Trust of India news agency reported 25 Covid-19 patients had died at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in the past 24 hours and the lives of another 60 were at risk amid a serious oxygen supply crisis.
It quoted unidentified officials as saying “low pressure oxygen” could be the cause of their deaths.
Ajoy Sehgal, a hospital spokesperson, would not comment on whether the 25 patients died from a lack of oxygen.
He said an oxygen tanker had just entered the hospital complex and he hoped it would temporarily relieve the depleted supplies.
The New Delhi Television channel later cited the hospital chairman as saying the deaths cannot be ascribed to a lack of oxygen.
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