Medical workers bring out a body out of Neelkanth Hospital, in Amritsar on Saturday. (Express Photo: Rana Simranjit Singh) With increasing demand of medical oxygen in Amritsar, authorities said that it is a day and night scramble to get supplies.
Medical Education Minister O P Soni said: “Oxygen supply is neck and neck. One tanker comes and then we start waiting for next tanker. One tanker lasts for seven to eight hours. We are receiving tankers from Panipat and Himachal. We have found a most nearest source of oxygen in Pakistan. But to get that, we would need permission from Centre.”
While the Centre had sanctioned three plants for Government Medical Colleges at Amritsar, Faridkot and Patiala, only one at Faridkot is working as of today.
Soni said, “Union government had granted some oxygen plants and one of these plants is working. We wrote repeatedly to Center to install these oxygen plants. These plants wouldn’t had made big difference even if all these were working because capacity of these plants was very low as compared to demand these days. Plant installed at Faridkot produces only one MT oxygen every day. Similarly plant proposed at Amritsar was of one MT.”
Amritsar worst at contact tracing
One of the most affected districts , Amritsar has emerged the poorest performer when it comes to contact-case ratio.
Contact-case tracing ratio in Amritsar is only 8.8 per cent which is lowest in Punjab.
Average contact-case tracing ratio in state is 17 with Muktsar, Sangrur and Amritsar at the bottom. Besides, Jalandhar (24.1 per cent), Ludhiana (21.9 per cent) and SAS Nagar (21.3 per cent) are best performers during last seven days.
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