At meet with PM Modi, CM Yediyurappa airs oxygen woes

Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa on Wednesday told Prime Minister Narendra Modi that he was concerned over the supply of oxygen in hospitals during the Covid-19 pandemic and asked the Centre to "incentivise" industries to set up new oxygen generation units.

In a video conference with Modi, Yediyurappa said the consumption of oxygen was drastically increasing owing to the increase in the number of oxygenated beds and ICUs.

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While the current availability for liquid oxygen for medical purposes is around 375 metric tonnes per day, which is sufficient for the time being, the peak demand of medical oxygen is calculated to be about 870 metric tonnes per day, Yediyurappa said. Karnataka, he said, will have some 31,000 oxygenated beds in government hospitals alone.

"Once the project of increasing the number of oxygenated beds is completed and there is a surge in the number of positive cases, we will not be able to provide sufficient medical oxygen without affecting industries," Yediyurappa said, according to a statement from the Chief Minister's Office.

The CM requested the Centre to rope in industries to meet the demand. "The production of hospital-level oxygen generation units also needs to be ramped up," Yediyurappa said. "At present, these firms are asking for three-four months' time to supply such units."

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According to the CM, oxygenated beds, ICUs and ventilators are crucial to treating serious Covid-19 patients. "When the outbreak began, we had about 7,000 oxygenated beds in government hospitals. This has been increased to about 18,000. More than 10,000 of these beds have been reserved for Covid-19 patients. Apart from this, another 4,250 oxygenated beds have been reserved for Covid patients in private hospitals," Yediyurappa said.

In ICUs, the government has earmarked 1,811 beds in state-run hospitals and 1,269 in private hospitals for Covid patients, he said.

In other measures, Yediyurappa told Modi that an increase in the number of tests was helping Karnataka bring down positivity and fatality rates.

The Centre asked Karnataka to concentrate on nine districts registering the highest number of deaths. It also asked the state government to increase surveillance and RT-PCR tests to threefold the current number.

The state has 136 testing laboratories at present with a capacity of 70,000 samples per day. So far, over 43 lakh samples have been tested, the government informed the PM.