Tracking oxygen supply: Goa, Southern states report shortage; Geography of supply a reason?
15 May, 2021 | newsx bureau
Seventy-five people died in a row for four days in Goa due to oxygen shortage. While the hospital says it has ‘fixed’ its oxygen issues, geography of supply continues to be a reason behind unequal ...
In this acute crisis of pandemic the medical oxygen shortage has become very common. Unfortunately, it is the impact of the geographical separation between the substantial bulk of plants producing oxygen and those in need. “Knowing the occupancy of beds in the hospitals, we will also be able to work out the average requirement of oxygen there. This will take care of any imbalance in supply,” said officer on special duty for Covid-19 Vinod Rao, as states have started setting up the oxygen monitoring systems to monitor the quantity of oxygen supplied to each hospital and the usage to ensure there is no wastage or excess storage.
Seventy-five people have died in a row for four days in Goa even after the hospital says it has ‘fixed’ its oxygen issues. Goa Forward Party President Vijai Sardesai said, He said the deaths had again happened during “the dark hours” when the hospital has been seeing oxygen supply fluctuating.
While people have been trying to mitigate the problem for the oxygen supply, the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) has sent in a substantial help by setting up a dashboard for monitoring of oxygen availability and supply across all hospitals in the city. The facility was kicked off on Wednesday.
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Similarly, Uttar Pradesh has set the Oxygen Monitoring System was successful to tag 38 oxygen tanks located in different parts of the country and another 25 will be tagged in the next 24 hours for managing the demand and keeping track of the real-time demand at hospitals.
Kerala being the only state to produce surplus oxygen, has been supplying to the states nearby including Goa, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and more. A conspicuous mismatch is seen between the government’s claim on the state’s demand for oxygen and consumption.
As the state government claims that the oxygen requirement is more than 1,700 MT, the data provided shows that the state’s consumption of oxygen for Covid-19 infected persons was around 723.86 kilo litre (KL) on May 9, registering a marginal increase from 700.74 KL recorded on May 6.