PGIMS, Rohtak resumes admission of new COVID patients after a brief halt due to oxygen shortage

ROHTAK: The PGIMS hospital in Rohtak, which briefly stopped admission of new COVID-19 patients after facing a "shortage" of medical oxygen, resumed admitting them during the day on Monday.

Officials said patients are now being admitted to the dedicated COVID facility in the institute.

It had stopped taking new coronavirus patients from Sunday night but started admitting patients by Monday afternoon.

Earlier in the day, Medical Superintendent Dr Pushpa Dahiya said that nearly 330 COVID patients were admitted to the Pandit Bhagwat Dayal Sharma Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (PGIMS), Rohtak, a tertiary care centre.

She earlier said that the institute stopped admitting new patients till further orders.

"It was on Sunday evening that we sensed an acute shortage of oxygen cylinders. We had to manage patients who were already admitted, most of them requiring high flow oxygen with some ventilator support," Dahiya said in the morning.

She said the hospital earlier faced issues in oxygen supply from a plant in Hisar.

The hospital also gets liquid oxygen from a plant in Bhiwadi in Rajasthan, from where there is a delay in supply in recent days due to a surge in demand with rising coronavirus cases.

Deputy Commissioner Manoj Kumar earlier said there was no shortage of oxygen and added that he would look into the issue after he was told that PGIMS here had stopped admitting new COVID patients.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar also visited PGIMS, Rohtak during the day.

Khattar also visited Panipat, Hisar and Faridabad to review the supply of oxygen and facilities for COVID patients, an official statement said.

At PGIMS, he held a meeting with senior officials of the hospital administration and sought feedback of the work being done to deal with the pandemic.

The chief minister also took stock of the facilities for the patients undergoing treatment at PGIMS from the institute's vice chancellor and issued necessary guidelines to them.

He said that in view of the pandemic, an additional 650 beds are being arranged at PGIMS, Rohtak.