West Bengal: Cov+ report, doctor’s prescription must to rent oxygen cylinder

KOLKATA: A patient can only get oxygen cylinders if he or she has a Covid-positive report along with a doctor’s prescription that says there is a need for oxygen. The state has now mandated that these two things are necessary to procure oxygen cylinders in order to prevent hoarding and black marketing in the face of crisis. A control room is also being set up at the state secretariat — Nabanna — to co-ordinate supply of oxygen centrally.

While there is already shortage of portable oxygen cylinders, hospitals are still getting uninterrupted supply of liquid medical oxygen (LMO). But the demand for LMO, too, has shot up in the last three weeks, with a high number of hospitalized patients requiring oxygen therapy. With hospitals hiking Covid bed numbers further, they are uncertain about an adequate supply in future.
“Our oxygen consumption has gone up by 50% over the last two weeks. Current utilization is around 3,000 cubic metres per day against 1,900 litres per day two weeks ago. This is expected to go up further with increased flow of Covid patients into critical care,” said R Venkatesh, zonal director (east), Narayana Health.
Peerless Hospital has two towers to store LMO with a capacity of 16Kl each. From an average requirement of 3Kl a day, the demand has gone up to about 5Kl a day in the past few days.
“With the number of patients requiring oxygen going up, the demand, too, has risen. We expect it to increase further to about 9Kl to 10Kl a day as and when we add more beds for Covid care. Luckily, the supply so far is very regular,” said Sudipta Mitra, CEO, Peerless Hospital.
Most Hospitals in the state are being supplied by Linde India and Air Water. The supply comes from three plants — Haldia, Durgapur and Jamshedpur. Suppliers said that there is no dearth of production. However, logistics, like tankers, could be a bit of a problem due to the increase demand.
“There is a drastic rise — by about three times — in demand for oxygen over the past two weeks. But, so far, the supply chain is steady,” said Alok Roy, chairman, Medica Group of Hospitals
Hospitals said the problem was with cycler oxygen. As most hospitals have their own LMO storage, there is no problem in supply when it comes to indoor patients. But patients who need oxygen support during transport to hospitals and smaller nursing homes that do not have storage plants are the ones undergoing the crisis.
The state has already applied to the Union health minister for supply of 10% of the imported oxygen. Till 6am on Saturday, there was a need for 223MT of oxygen in Bengal. There are also plans to divert industrial oxygen for hospital use. Bengal has the capacity to produce 497MT of oxygen.