Until 2019, before the pandemic hit the country, India required just 750-800 MT liquid medical oxygen (LMO), the rest was for industrial use. On paper, that leaves the country with a few hundred metric tonnes still to spare, but state after state has been complaining of acute shortage. Officially, India’s daily oxygen production capacity is 7,127 MT and its medical oxygen requirement has increased by 76 per cent in 10 days - from 3,842 MT on April 12 to 6,785 MT on April 22. Since the second wave began in early February, India has recorded close to 35,000 Covid deaths, but the country hasn’t kept a record of Covid deaths due to oxygen shortage.
A paramedic assisting Covid patients with oxygen support as they wait inside an Ambulance outside Civil Hospital in Gujarat. Up north in Uttar Pradesh, five patients died in a private Aligarh hospital before fresh oxygen could be supplied. In Gujarat’s Palanpur, five patients died in a private hospital after oxygen dried up on April 21.
Read | At PM-CMs meet: Covid surge peak likely mid-May, challenge until July, infra gaps in key states Two hours later, Tupseinder died, gasping for breath. So they used the limited oxygen left in a cardiac ambulance to sustain him. “He had no money to afford a concentrator or a cylinder,” says Sandhya Fernandes, a social worker who says she rang all hospitals to find Tupseinder a bed. His son rushed to two government-run Covid centres, but found no bed. The same night, the 60-year-old’s oxygen saturation dipped to 89. The elderly patient was saved.īut 10 km away, in a Dahisar slum, Ramnath Tupseinder’s story ended differently. The hunt led to a supplier, who was ready to rent out an oxygen concentrator for Rs 10,000, double the market price. A doctor advised them to get an oxygen cylinder at home. On April 9, in Mumbai’s suburb Kandivali, when Vinod Naik complained of breathlessness, his family tried to find him a hospital bed, but failed. Patients under home isolation have been unable to get cylinders, and the cost of refilling a cylinder or renting an oxygen concentrator has, in the absence of any regulation, sky-rocketed.
Nowhere is that vacuum more evident than in hospitals across Delhi, Mumbai and other urban centres where people have been struggling for something as basic as medical oxygen. The second wave of Covid-19 has exposed glaring gaps in the country’s health infrastructure and the government’s preparedness in dealing with a crisis that came with enough warning signs.