Odisha's daily oxygen demand surpasses first phase peak

BHUBANESWAR: With the sharp rise in new covid-19 infections, the daily oxygen consumption in the state has surpassed the peak demand of the first phase of the pandemic last year.
State’s oxygen consumption has touched 35.99 MT per day while the number of covid patients in ICU is 748 as on Friday evening. The consumption is far more than last year’s peak oxygen demand of 23 MT per day when highest 820 patients were in the ICU on September 27 last year. The demand may go up substantially since the number of new infections has been rising exponentially with more than 6000 new cases per day for past three days.
As the demand for oxygen has been steadily rising, government authorities said there is no problem in supply.
Additional chief secretary (health) Pradipta Kumar MOhaoatra said the government’s current capacity is to supply 129.68 MT through cylinders and 375 MT liquid medical oxygen (LMO) from various industries. On Friday, the state produced 43.40 MT through cylinders and 175.23 MT from LMO.
According to WHO formula, 100 patients on oxygen support needs around 2.8 MT oxygen per day. Since the daily consumption now has touched 35.99, more than 1200 patients currently need oxygen support. Odisha would not have problems of cylinders for around 4600 patients since it can supply 129.68 MT per day, the government sources said.
The government has placed orders to purchase additional cylinders 18000 cylinders. While 9000 of the cylinders are expected to be delivered by May 20 and the rest 9000 by June 7.
Since more than production, management of oxygen cylinders is a bigger issue, the state government on issued modalities on filling up of oxygen cylinders for use in the Covid care facilities.
As per the modalities, it would be the duty of the district drugs inspectors to ensure timely despatch of empty cylinders to the assigned fillers and timely return from the fillers. In consultation with the hospital authorities, they would identify collection points of cylinders and assign transport vehicles to each collection point. Three to four covid hospitals would have one such collection point. Vehicles for transporting oxygen cylinders will be provided by the district authorities. These would be GPS tagged to track their movement for timely delivery.