PATNA: The state government on Thursday diverted 90% of
oxygen manufactured by three private plants in Patna for use by all hospitals treating Covid-19 patients in Patna as demand for medical oxygen has skyrocketed in the last few days, and suppliers are unable to meet the requirement.
Industries department additional chief secretary Brijesh Mehrotra directed Patna DM Chandrashekhar Singh to divert the oxygen supply from industrial units to hospitals at a high-level virtual meeting held on Thursday.
Deepak Kumar, advisor to CM Nitish Kumar, Patna divisional commissioner Sanjay Kumar Agarwal, civil surgeon Vibha Kumari, nodal officers of all private hospitals treating Covid-19 patients and representatives of oxygen refilling plants in Patna were present at the meeting.
Later, the DM issued orders to divert 90% of the oxygen for use by hospitals and deputed a magistrate at each of the three manufacturing units for monitoring.
Singh deputed a nodal officer for every Covid-19 hospital to monitor the daily demand and supply along and also ordered the formation of a cell to oversee the situation.
The DM also directed the SDOs of Patna City, Sadar and Danapur to keep an eye on illegal oxygen storage at hospitals. As per the government authorities at the meeting, till now it is only Patna where medical oxygen is in short supply.
It was divisional commissioner Agarwal who came up with the suggestion during the meeting that around 50% of oxygen produced in Patna is still being supplied to industries and it may be diverted for medical use for a few days to save lives until alternate arrangements of liquid oxygen tankers are made.
As per the DM, private hospitals of Patna are generating a demand of 10,000 oxygen cylinders per day and plants can refill around 7,000 cylinders.
The representatives of oxygen refilling plants in Patna told the government authorities that they needed a continuous supply of at least four tankers of liquid medical oxygen (LMO) per day for their manufacturing plants so that they can keep refilling cylinders and try to meet the demand of hospitals. They said liquid oxygen is not manufactured in the state.
At the meeting, the industries department authorities established contact with multinational gas plants outside the state who agreed to supply liquid oxygen for Patna hospitals.
However, they asked for arranging tankers to which DM proposed that nitrogen carrying tankers of
Bihar state milk cooperative federation limited could be used for the purpose.
Mehrotra asked DM to also make arrangements for procuring oxygen from plants in districts such as Begusarai, Muzaffarpur, Bhagalpur, Purnia, Aurangabad, Darbhanga, Motihari and Gaya.
The possibility of setting up plants for manufacturing liquid oxygen on a war footing was also explored at the meeting but a Patna-based oxygen manufacturing plant owner said it would take around two years to set up a plant for manufacturing liquid oxygen as most of the machinery is imported and up to six months to set up a plant which would produce oxygen from the air.
However, CM’s advisor Kumar asked Mehrotra to explore the possibility of plants that could be set up in the next six months in Patna for future needs and the government will extend all possible help for it.