No Shortage Of Oxygen Supply For Treatment Of COVID-19 Patients: Health Secretary

New Delhi: As the requirement for oxygen support is one of the key treatment procedures for COVID-19 patients, the Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan on Tuesday informed that the government has made all efforts to ensure the availability of oxygen supply in various states and districts across India.

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Responding to a query about the oxygen availability during the weekly COVID-19 update in India, Mr Bhushan added,

There is no hindrance in the transportation of oxygen movement (interstate and intra-state both). We are ensuring that no restriction is imposed on the movement of medical oxygen between States/UTs. We have made provision of ‘Green Corridor’ for Liquid Medical Oxygen (LMO) tankers within the cities in the day time. An Inter-ministerial Control Group has been created to monitor oxygen facility in real-time.

In the last media-briefing on the COVID-19 update, Mr Bhushan mentioned that India’s capacity for production of oxygen is slightly more than 6,900 metric tons per day.

States have to create a control room for oxygen facility. Micro-level management at the hospital level has to be looked after. The projected demand for oxygen and future planning also to be checked. For this, hospitals have been directed to ensure facility wise oxygen inventory management and advance planning for timely replenishment so that there are no stockouts. Hospitals have to ensure timely payment of the due bills to the manufacturers and suppliers to maintain an uninterrupted supply of oxygen. Improve power supply infrastructure and ensure uninterrupted supply to Oxygen Manufacturing Units, the Health Ministry said.

The Centre said that the hospitals have to improve storage capacity and identify MSME units whose storage capacity can be used to store oxygen.

Undertake Oxygen Consumption Audit, ensure only cases requiring medical oxygenation are administered with oxygen and prevent leakages due to negligence of hospital staff and ensure proper disinfection of oxygen cylinders as per protocols while sending cylinders to fillers of Oxygen, the government said.

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The government also advised states to expedite the process of grant of licenses to produce medical oxygen to those already producing industrial oxygen.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.) 

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