Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday said the possibility of third wave hitting was real and the Government is preparing to tackle it on a “war footing”. The city Government has started 22 Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) Oxygen Plants in nine hospitals.
Inaugurated PSA plants, Kejriwal said, “A total of 17.3MT oxygen plants will be produced from these plants, and will start 17 more plants by July.” Kejriwal also thanked industrialists and corporates for their support. “All entities, doctors, nurses, paramedic staff, and sanitation workers, etc…, played a huge role in fighting this war against Corona,” he said.
Reiterating days of Delhi’s 2nd corona wave, Kejriwal said, “It was the time when 28,000 cases of Covid -19 were reported per day. The intensity of the wave was severe as many have lost their loved ones,” he added and thanked Roshni Nadar for providing 6,000 oxygen cylinders for corona patients in Delhi.While the national Capital registered 213 cases and the positivity rate recorded at 0.30 per cent, Kejriwal cautioned people and said, “We are now at the risk of the third wave of Corona.” “UK has started experiencing it, cases are increasing there.”
Learning from past experiences when the city witnessed medical oxygen scarcity, Kejriwal said that Delhi needs 150-200 MT of medical oxygen for non-Covid purposes, apart from some amount of industrial oxygen. This requirement rose to 700 MT during the corona crisis because every patient needed oxygen.”
“We have to be fully prepared, Public Work Department (PWD), HCL, Maruti, engineers and hospitals helping us to start the 22 PSA plants,” Kejriwal said.
Delhi now has 27 PSA plants. Six plants have already been started by the central Government and seven are going to begin soon, another 17 plants will be installed by July. “We are also procuring oxygen tankers to mitigate the impact of the third wave of Corona. I pray to God that the third wave does not emerge. Our vaccination program has been running successfully. The shortage of vaccines is still a problem, but our ‘Jahan Vote, Wahan Vaccination’ is a success. I want to congratulate all of you on this effort,” he added further.
Health Minister Satyendra Jain was also there and said HCL will be supplying more plants, which will arrive soon.
The Delhi Government has installed plants in Sanjay Gandhi Memorial Hospital, Satyawadi Raja Harishchandra, Ambedkar Nagar hospital, Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital, and Burari Hospital. These plans have already been started in these five hospitals.
The bifurcation of further 22 plants being installed are - Sanjay Gandhi Memorial Hospital-3 plants with a combined capacity (CC) of 1000 LPM Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital- 3 plants CC of 1500 LPM, Deep Chand Bandhu Hospital – 3 plants with a CC of 1200 LPM, Babasaheb Ambedkar Hospital – 3 plants with CC 1200 LPM, Guru Tegh Bahadur Hospital – 4 plants, CC of 2000 LPM, Nirankari Field Hospital - 1 plant with the capacity of 1000 LPM, Burari Hospital – one plant with a capacity of 400 LPM, ILBS Hospital – 2 plants with 1000 LPM each, Madan Mohan Malviya Hospital – 1 plant with capacity of 170 LPM.
Importantly, all these hospitals have a capacity of 9500 LPM, this further means that 1000 beds daily will be able to receive oxygen from the hospital itself.
Earlier, Delhi Government had started a 2700 LPM which could cater to 275 beds daily. With this, 1300 patients can be given oxygen on a single day in the hospitals themselves.
Roshni Nadar Malhotra, Chairperson of HCL Technologies, said, “HCL is contributing 21 ready-to-install oxygen plants, imported from France, and 17 of these have already been installed across seven hospitals in Delhi. The remaining four have also arrived and will be installed over the next few days.
