Punjab desperately needs medical oxygen as Covid-19 cases surge

CHANDIGARH: As Covid-19 active cases touched 74,343 in Punjab on Sunday, hospitals across the state are gasping for oxygen. Punjab’s medical oxygen allocation is 227 metric tonnes (MT) per day against its existing requirement of 295MT, which is increasing by almost 50MT in a week.
A total of 296 critically-ill Covid patients were on ventilator support across Punjab on Sunday and 9,384 patients were on oxygen support. Amid soaring demand for medical oxygen every day, the state government has been repeatedly knocking at the doors of the central government to increase its supply to save precious lives.
“Medical oxygen consumption for Ludhiana has increased from 13MT on April 15 to 66MT on May 8,” says Punjab Civil Services (PCS) officer Amit Bamby, the nodal officer for monitoring oxygen supply in Ludhiana, the worst affected district of the state. Ludhiana has nearly 50 small hospitals and six big hospitals taking care of Covid patients. On April 15, Ludhiana’s small hospitals needed 800 oxygen cylinders per day and their consumption has now increased to 3,800 cylinders a day, he added.
Ludhiana recorded the highest number of 1,550 Covid deaths in Punjab till Sunday. “We are on the toes round the clock. I’ve been sleeping for 2-4 hours in the last 20 days as we keep getting SOS calls from hospitals and in case we are short of oxygen supply, we have to arrange from other districts,” said Bamby.
Demand spikes, but oxygen allocation to state still low
As Punjab chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh has repeatedly raised the demand for enhancing oxygen supply, the central government on April 30 increased medical oxygen allocation for Punjab to 195 MT per day — 90 MT from Bokaro (Jharkhand), 60 MT from Inox Barotiwala (Himachal Pradesh), 20 MT from Panipat (Haryana),15 MT from Roorkee (Uttarakhand) and 10 MT from Linde India at Dehradun (Uttarakhand). After including the internal allocation of 32 MT, the total allocation to Punjab comes to 227 MT as on date.
Punjab government officials said that two days back the state stopped getting oxygen from Dehradun oxygen plant as Uttarakhand required oxygen for its hospitals. As the cases in Haryana are also increasing at a rapid pace, Punjab can face a critical shortage of oxygen in case the Panipat plant also stops supply to Punjab.
Dr Adarsh Suri, chief administrator of 400-bedded Sohana Hospital in Mohali district, told TOI, “Yesterday, we were left with only 30 oxygen cylinders even as we had 130 Covid patients. If we have a single Covid patient in emergency whose oxygen saturation level reaches 65-70, he would require four to five oxygen cylinders in a single night. You can imagine the situation.” He said that his hospital sends SOS messages to the state government every day though the officials try to extend full support, they are also struggling to increase the daily oxygen quota of the state.
As hospitals in Punjab are also getting calls from overburdened Delhi and NCR almost every day, Dr Suri says his hospital is ready to admit Covid-19 patients up to 50% (200) of its full capacity of 400, provided it gets the required oxygen quota.
Since Punjab requires at least 36 tankers against its present availability of 20 tankers, the state government has requested the central government to enhance the number of tankers.
As the state government is also facing logistics issues in transporting its oxygen quota from Bokaro, it has also urged the central government to allocate its quota from a nearby state besides arranging Indian Air Force transport aircraft sorties to pick up oxygen from Bokaro.
Vaccine shortage a concern too
During the discussion on the state’s Covid situation and measures taken to tackle the crisis, Amarinder also urged Modi to ensure immediate supply of the required Covid-19 vaccine, which too is in short supply.
He told Prime Minister Narendra Modi that the state had so far been unable to initiate the Phase III of the vaccination process for the 18-45 age group, which is now scheduled to start in government hospitals on Monday, after the delivery of one lakh doses.
He added that the vaccine doses were in short supply even for the 45+ age group.
Though he said that 1.63 lakh vaccine doses were expected to come on Sunday, these were not enough to meet the state’s requirement.