NEW DELHI: In a major boost to medical oxygen infrastructure, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal inaugurated 22 new oxygen generation plants virtually in nine hospitals on Saturday.
Together, these plants will generate 17.3 metric tonnes of oxygen.
Kejriwal said that the chances of a resurgence in Covid-19 infection were “quite real” and said the government was preparing for it on a war footing.
A total of 33 pressure swing absorption oxygen plants are now functional in Delhi.
Under extensive preparations for a possible surge in Covid, 17 more oxygen plants will be installed in the coming month.
Delhi government has set up 27 PSA plants, while the central government has installed six in state government hospitals.
The Delhi government plants have a capacity to generate 22.2MT of oxygen daily, while the Centre’s six plants can generate 8.1MT.
Calling the augmentation of oxygen a huge development, the CM thanked PWD, HCL, Maruti Udyog, engineers and hospitals, all partners supporting Delhi government in erecting 22 PSA plants at short notice.
Delhi government is also procuring oxygen tankers.
“We now face the risk of a possible third Covid wave.
There are indications that the United Kingdom has already started seeing the third wave, even after 45% of the people were vaccinated.
So, we also must be fully prepared,” Kejriwal said.
“In the recent wave of infections, Delhi suffered a huge shortage of oxygen.
Delhi is not an industrial state and so doesn’t have production sources for oxygen.
Delhi requires a relatively smaller share of oxygen for its hospitals, but Covid increased the city’s requirements manifold,” Kejriwal said during the e-inauguration.
The CM and health minister Satyendar Jain thanked HCL for providing 17 oxygen PSA plants to Delhi government.
Four plants have been made available by Maruti Udyog.
“HCL will be giving us four more plants, which will arrive soon.
Similarly, five such plans have already been installed in hospitals like Sanjay Gandhi Memorial Hospital, Satyawadi Raja Harishchandra, Ambedkar Nagar Hospital, Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital, and Burari Hospital,” said Jain.
Many Delhi government hospitals now have multiple oxygen generation plants.
The CM explained that Delhi needed around 200MT of medical oxygen for non-Covid purposes, apart from some amount of industrial oxygen.
“This requirement rose to 700MT during the corona crisis because every patient needed oxygen.
We didn’t have the means to produce the gas or even tankers to get it from Haryana and Uttar Pradesh on the directions of the central government.
Now, we must be fully prepared.
We cannot abdicate our responsibilities,” he said.
Delhi is working assiduously to create infrastructure that will meet the needs if the city faces a resurgence in Covid infections.
One of the measures being taken by Delhi government is to strengthen oxygen generation capacity because during the recent wave, the city faced a huge scarcity of oxygen and tragically many patients died when the oxygen supply ran out in certain hospitals.
Kejriwal also inaugurated an oxygen storage facility in northwest Delhi on Thursday.
“I had to ensure oxygen storage tanks in Delhi because even if we procure medical oxygen from outside the capital, we need to have the capacity to store the gas,” he said.
“We inaugurated three storage tanks of 57MT each, along with oxygen tanks of 13.5MT each.” Kejriwal thanked the Centre for its support in Delhi’s battle against the coronavirus.