Smaller hospitals in Pune resume full operations as supply of O2 improves

PUNE: Small and medium-sized Covid hospitals in the city have started admitting new patients in their intensive care unit (ICUs) now that the supply of medical oxygen has stabilized significantly in the past week.
Most of these hospitals — dependent on supply of oxygen cylinders on a regular basis — had stopped taking fresh admissions last month owing to uncertainty over receiving an uninterrupted supply of cylinders from their distributors/refillers.

The unprecedented oxygen crisis had badly affected patient-care services after the district’s daily requirement had far surpassed the daily production capacity in the wake of a sharp spike in cases that had peaked in April.
“Small and medium-sized Covid hospitals have started taking new admissions, mainly in their ICUs, as the supply of medical oxygen has improved significantly,” said Sanjay Patil, chairman of the Indian Medical Association’s Hospital Board of India (HBI) — the association of small and medium sized hospitals in Pune.
Covid patients undergoing care at ICUs need to have high oxygen support, which cannot be put on hold or interrupted even momentarily. “That was the reason the smaller hospitals had stopped taking new admission as there was uncertainty over getting the required supply on a regular basis,” Patil said.
Supply improved after the district authorities, in addition to procuring a huge number of new oxygen cylinders, started implementing measures to stop wastage through leakages. Further, the daily cases have also been decreasing slowly over the past week.
Currently, more than 60,000 Covid patients with mild illness are undergoing home-isolation care in the Pune Metropolitan Region (PMR), and quite a few of them might require hospitalisation, should their condition worsen.
“Hence, although daily cases have started decreasing, there are many inquiries mainly for ICU beds,” surgeon Dhananjay Kelkar, medical director, Deenanath Mangeshkar hospital, said.
Big private hubs like DMH had come under massive strain when small/medium sized hospitals had stopped taking new admissions last month for a want of medical oxygen.
“Now that the small and medium-sized hospitals have started taking admissions in ICUs, this will reduce the burden on big hospitals,” said orthopaedic surgeon Ramesh Ranka, medical director, Ranka hospital.
Consumption of medical oxygen in the Pune district has gone above 400 metric tonnes, as against its full daily production capacity of 350 metric tonnes.