Apoorva S. was relieved when she successfully organised an oxygen cylinder for her COVID-19 positive husband who is undergoing treatment at home as he was unable to find a bed in Bengaluru. But her relief was short-lived, and her anxiety returned almost immediately as she started planning to procure more oxygen.
“I either have to find him an oxygenated bed or another cylinder of oxygen, before the one we have runs out. Neither beds nor oxygen cylinders are easy to come by in the city,” she said. She spent the better part of the last two days calling up hospitals and oxygen suppliers, begging for a bed or a cylinder.
For the past one year, Syed Touseef Masood has been coordinating six oxygen control rooms run by Mercy Mission. “We have 500 oxygen cylinders that we continuously refill and give out to patients in dire need, whose oxygen saturation levels are low but are unable to get beds. In our experience, this can only work as a stop gap arrangement till they find a bed.”
He observed that over the last ten days, the demand for oxygen to be administered at home has risen exceeding the limited resources they have. “The core problem is unavailability of oxygenated ICU beds and shortage of oxygen supply. There have been many cases where patients with low oxygen saturation are unable to get either a bed or oxygen cylinder, which may lead to death,” he said.
The crisis has also hit non COVID-19 patients, who are dependent on a steady supply of oxygen to go about their daily life such as people suffering from acute pulmonary diseases. “There are many senior citizens who take oxygen regularly at home. Most of them are suddenly finding themselves left high and dry,” said Rajendra Prasad, an oxygen supplier in Mandya and Bengaluru.
Demand and scarcity has spurred a price rise and even a black market. Depending on its capacity, a cylinder can cost anywhere between ₹1,000 and ₹5,000. “The price of an oxygen cylinder has gone up several times in the market,” said Aravind Kumar, working at an oxygen supplier in the city.
Mr. Prasad said that in the past week, even regulators for the cylinders have run out of stock. “I have been trying to procure them from producers in Kolkata and Delhi for the past two days to no avail. Without a regulator, the cylinder is useless,” he said.
In the nick of time
Staff at a hospital in the city witnessed extremely tense moments on Saturday night after it started running out of oxygen putting 20 patients on life support at risk. It was a race against time and a close one at that: fresh supply arrived just a minute after the hospital’s oxygen ran out.
Gunasekar Vuppalapati, MD, GVG Invivo Hospital, JP Nagar, said they decided to titrate oxygen so that the saturation levels of those on support was maintained between 85 and 95. This way, they could stretch the oxygen they had by a few more hours.
“We sent SOS calls to all civic authorities and even met local MP Tejasvi Surya. Oxygen supply arrived almost five hours later in the nick of time. Any further delay would have led to deaths,” he said.