WithOxygen supplies in the state depleting fast, Punjab Chief Minister AmarinderSingh on Sunday sent another SOS letter to Union Health and Family WelfareMinister Harsh Vardhan, for the second time in two days, for urgent increase inallocation of quota.
Healso directed Chief Secretary Vini Mahajan to pursue with the government ofIndia for urgent supplies, given the serious situation, with patient loadincreasing due to influx from Delhi and other states, and pushing up demand formedical oxygen.
Hefurther asked the Chief Secretary to rush urgent supplies to Amritsar, whereprecious lives were lost on Saturday due to shortage of oxygen in a privatehospital.
Giventhe criticality of the situation, the Chief Minister has sought four-hourly reportsfrom Principal Secretary Industries on the state's hospital-wise demand-supplysituation of Oxygen.
Sunday'sletter to the Union Health Minister followed the Centre's failure to increasethe allocation to Punjab as per the new allocation of LMO issued on Saturday,despite his plea for enhancement to at least 250 metric tonnes (MT) of LMO perday.
TheChief Minister had on Saturday written to the Union Health Minister requestingfor an increase Punjab's liquid oxygen quota to 250 MT daily due to continuoussurge of Covid cases, seeking his urgent personal intervention in this regard.
Writingin continuation of his earlier letter, the Singh, on Sunday, said "thesituation has become very grim over last few days as our supply of LMO has notbeen able to meet the increased demand."
Hefurther wrote that despite his request for allocation of at least 250 MT of LMOper day to Punjab from outside the state, the new allocation of LMO issued onApril 24 by the fovernment of India did not increase the allocation to Punjab,though allocation to other states increased substantially.
Karnataka(167 per cent), Telangana (20 per cent) and Rajasthan (29 per cent).
Pointingout that six persons died in Amritsar on Saturday, likely due to non-supply ofoxygen, he observed that Punjab does not have any major LMO production capacityand is largely dependent on the supply from outside the state, thusnecessitating the Minister's urgent intervention.
Currently,the daily allocation of medical oxygen for Punjab from the Centra pool is 105MT, excluding the production of the local ASUs which generate around 60 MT ofliquid oxygen within Punjab and meet requirements of various re-fillers,bottling plants and distributors.
Thedaily consumption and requirement as per the present case load for Covid-19patients for Punjab, on the other hand, is around 200 MT as April 25, andaround 50 MT for non-Covid patients (emergency and other essential requirementsthat cannot be stopped).
Thismakes the total daily requirement and consumption for Punjab healthcareservices of 250 MT of liquid medical oxygen.
Thisis expected to rise to around 250-300 MT in the next two weeks as per theprojections of case load.
Thestate's capacity for storage of medical oxygen for all healthcare facilities,including both government and private facilities, in Punjab is around 370 MT.