Not oxygen crunch, probes say deaths due to medical negligence, other factors

Gurgaon: During the second Covid wave, when the demand for medical oxygen shot up and supply struggled to keep pace, 19 deaths were reported from four hospitals in Gurgaon, Rewari and Hisar for which the government ordered inquiries.
Two of the hospitals – Kathuria in Gurgaon and Virat in Rewari – had admitted the patients died because they had run out of oxygen. Soni Burn hospital in Hisar reported the deaths shortly after sending an SOS that it had only 30 minutes of oxygen left. At Kriti hospital, family members of the Covid patients who died alleged the hospital had no oxygen left. All the four incidents were reported between April 25 and May 1.
The probes, however, have concluded that “medical negligence” and some other factors led to the deaths, not oxygen shortage, senior Haryana government officials said on Tuesday in response to queries about the findings of the investigations after the Centre said in Parliament no state had specifically reported any deaths due to oxygen shortage during the second wave of Covid.
Prepared by the districts, the reports are unlikely to have reached the Centre, however, because the state’s health minister, Anil Vij, himself hasn’t seen them. Vij told TOI on Tuesday he had ordered magisterial inquiries wherever deaths due to oxygen shortage had been reported but hadn’t yet come across the inquiry reports from the districts. “I will ask for the inquiry reports and then comment on them,” Vij said.
Asked about the reports, Gurgaon deputy commissioner Yash Garg, under whose watch the Kriti (6 deaths) and Kathuria (4 deaths) probes were conducted, said, “In the Kathuria hospital case, the probe revealed the hospital had oxygen, hence shortage of oxygen wasn’t the reason. And in Kriti hospital, too, the cause of deaths was not oxygen shortage but other factors,” he said. On the deaths at Soni Burn, Hisar deputy commissioner Priyanka Soni said, “The probe revealed that the hospital had admitted more people than its capacity, and therefore, it was medical negligence.”
The Rewari deputy commissioner could not be reached for a comment. But on April 25, the day the deaths were reported from the district, Virat hospital owner Virat Vir Yadav, had told this paper their staffers had gone to fetch an oxygen tanker from Bawal around 3pm and could not return by 5pm. “We did not have oxygen for the patients,” Yadav had said.
Dr AK Kathuria, who owns Kathuria hospital in Gurgaon which reported deaths the same day, had also told this paper the hospital had exhausted its oxygen supplies. “We had informed the nodal officer and the SDM about the crisis. But we failed to get any help. All four patients were on oxygen support and there was no supply,” Kathuria had said. On Tuesday, he told TOI there was a shortage of supply during that period with a high number of critical patients coming to hospitals but the situation had improved later after the state government had streamlined supply.