On Friday, at least 25 COVID-19 patients died in the past 24 hours in one of Delhi’s premier hospitals, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital. The chairman of the hospital, Dr D S Rana, said that those patients were very sick and refuted the reports that the deaths were caused due to lack of oxygen. He said that he would not as cribe these deaths due to oxygen shortage as a large number of patients are admitted in the hospital in a very serious condition and that’s the reason for the high fatality.

He further said that they were facing a severe shortage of oxygen. On a few occasions they had to do manual ventilation such as intermittent manual compression of a gas-filled reservoir bag to forcefully push the gas into a patient’s lungs so that patients on ventilator support can survive.

On Friday, the hospital has received fresh oxygen supplies thrice but the quantity was very less and the doctors said how to treat patients when the critical supply is only not guaranteed! A patient on ventilator support can die in minutes without oxygen supply.

Several other hospitals are facing the same problem. They had stopped taking new admissions because of the ongoing crisis regarding oxygen supply. At Cygnus Hospital, Rohini, due to an oxygen crisis, two patients died last night. But the hospital said that the deaths were because of COVID-19.

The administrators of Holy Family, Indian Spinal Injuries Centre and Manipal red-flagged the issue of oxygen shortage. Their officials tweeted at 1pm on Friday, that their oxygen cylinder stock was getting depleted. And shortly, the hospital received the supply of oxygen.

Indian Spinal Injuries Centre management said in a statement that the hospital is desperately trying to arrange oxygen cylinders from Friday morning, and 18 oxygen cylinders were arranged till the evening, helping them to treat the patients at present. But this supply is not enough and they would face a grave crisis if they run out of cylinder oxygen.

The hospital then started a strategy of making two patients share one cylinder using connectors. This should work for the time. They are in constant touch with the government and suppliers to confirm availability.

Dr Sumit Ray, Head of critical care, Holy Family Hospital, said that the government is trying to increase supplies. But the requirement is so high and the delivery time is also so stretched that all hospitals are getting the supply from a few hours to a few minutes just before their stocks run out. This is making everybody anxious and is a very stressful situation. If the oxygen supply stops then those on the ventilator can die within minutes.

Dr SCL Gupta, Medical director of the hospital said that itis a serious challenge for doctors. Batra Hospital was left with only half-anhour of oxygen at 10:30 pm on Friday. They were told that 1,000 litres of oxygen were sent. But that is also not sufficient and their struggle continued through the night. They did not take any new admissions. They have 352 patients, out of them 320 are coronavirus patients. All are on oxygen support and 38-40 patients are on ventilator support.

Aakash Healthcare in Dwarka, had only two hours of oxygen supply left at 11 am. At 2:46 pm, an oxygen tanker arrived and were able to manage for almost seven hours. The 233-bed hospital has 250 coronavirus patients and is working beyond their capacity as 70 percent patients require oxygen supply.

A similar situation is at the Gupta multi-speciality hospital at Vivek Vihar. They are sending their employees to refill cylinders for patients to survive. The supply is unpredictable.

Source: ET Healthworld