NEW DELHI: At least two hospitals in Delhi sent out desperate SOS calls to authorities on Sunday to replenish their dwindling oxygen stocks as smaller facilities continued to battle an acute shortage of the live-saving gas amid spiralling coronavirus cases. Madhukar Rainbow Children s Hospital in Malviya on Sunday sounded an alarm about their depleting stocks around afternoon, saying 50 people, including four newborns, were at risk . An official of the hospital said in the afternoon there are around 80 patients, including those suffering from Covid-19, at the hospital. It also has 15 newborns, he said. There are 50 people, including four newborns, on oxygen support. They are at risk, he said. The hospital does not have a liquid oxygen storage tank and depends on oxygen cylinders from a private vendor.
ISSUE DATE: May 10, 2021
UPDATED: May 1, 2021 18:49 IST
A Covid-19 patient, on oxygen support outside Delhi’s
LNJP Hospital, waits to be admitted (Amal KS/Getty Images)
On the night of April 23, Subhash Varma, a 53-year-old healthcare professional, and his wife Anuja returned exhausted to their flat in Dwarka, a suburb in southwestern Delhi. They had spent a harrowing day trying to get Anuja’s severely ill sister Tanuja Vidyarthi into the emergency ward at the Jaipur Golden Hospital, a designated Covid-19 treatment centre in Rohini, 22 kilometres away. A schoolteacher from Karol Bagh, Tanuja, 53, had tested positive for Covid on April 16 and rushed to the hospital after her blood oxygen level plummeted to under 70.