Uttar Pradesh meets the Oxygen requirements of all Covid patients
Lucknow: The second wave of Covid-19 is 30-50 times more infectious than the first wave, which increased the demand of oxygen across the country. Every state faced the crisis of oxygen. In such a situation the Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath prepared an action plan to fulfill the oxygen demand in Uttar Pradesh. Now, there is no shortage of oxygen, and every district has sufficient stock of oxygen for the Covid patients. The CM also instructed for the supply of oxygen to the patients in home isolation.
“We have enhanced the oxygen supply up to 1000MT per day in the state. No state in the country has supplied oxygen in such a quantity. We are arranging oxygen to fulfill the demands in the districts,” said additional chief secretary (home) Avnish Kumar Awasthi.
Online monitoring of the oxygen supply system is being done through a special control room set up in the Home Department to fulfill the demand of oxygen in the state. In this control room, senior officials and employees of the Home department, Food and Drug administration, Medical Education, Health and Family welfare and Transport Department are working for 24 hours in coordination.
Proper distribution of oxygen was one of the major reasons responsible for the crisis, as there was a smaller number of cryogenic tankers for oxygen supply. To overcome the crisis, such tankers were arranged with the help of the Centre and entrepreneurs. Besides, the government also issued global tender for this purpose, and UP became the first state for taking this initiative. The state, which had 64 oxygen tankers earlier, today has 89 tankers. The central government also provided 14 tankers of 400MT capacity.
Anticipating the future needs the government decided to install oxygen plants in all districts, and budget has also been released for this purpose. Besides, the central and state governments and the private sector have also stepped in for the installation of oxygen plants. Various PSUs have also taken initiatives to install oxygen plants at their own levels. Special efforts are being taken by the sugarcane development and sugar industry and excise department for oxygen generation in all 75 districts of the state. The MSME units are also extending their support to end the oxygen crisis.
The government has also provided oxygen concentrators to the hospitals including CHCs. Permission was granted to the districts purchase oxygen concentrators as per their needs. Besides, the help is also being taken from Oxygen Express and Indian Air Force for bringing oxygen from other states.
According to Awasthi, a record 1031.43 MT of oxygen has been supplied to medical colleges, medical institutions, private hospitals and refillers in Uttar Pradesh during the past 24 hours. Under self-production, 81.87 MT of oxygen has also been supplied through air separators units and 3471 patients of home isolation have also been supplied through cylinders of 26.44MT of oxygen.
A total supply of record 1031.43 MT of oxygen was made in the last 24 hours, out of which 623.11 MT of oxygen has been supplied to the refillers by the department of Food Safety and Drug Administration. In addition, 313.02 MT oxygen has been supplied to medical colleges and medical institutions in the state, and 95.29MT oxygen has been supplied directly to private hospitals by oxygen suppliers. Awasthi informed that 85.08 MT were supplied in Kanpur, Varanasi (57.15MT), Prayagraj (56.99MT), Meerut (261.41MT), Moradabad 53.12MT), Agra (73.47MT), Gorakhpur (53.21MT), and Lucknow (155.26MT) in the last 24 hours.
The hospitalized Covid patients need oxygen support, for which all possible measures have been taken to fulfil oxygen needs, said additional chief secretary (information) Navneet Sehgal.
