Oxygen Crisis Leaves Nation Gasping For Breath

India reels under 2nd covid wave

NEW DELHI: As India runs out of oxygen across cities and states, bodies pile up in hospitals, families beg for help on social media and bodies rot in morgues, the Covid-19 virus seems to have hit the country “like a storm”.

The rapid rise in cases has stretched supplies of beds in intensive care units, ventilators and oxygen. Testing infrastructure has also been overwhelmed by the second wave, with redtapism preventing many from getting admission.

Delhi is fighting an everyday battle to keep some 18,000 Covid-19 patients and thousands of other critical patients in hospitals alive minute-to-minute and hour-to-hour. Every morning, small private hospitals in the city start sending out SOS messages of oxygen supplies depleting, making fervent pleas to save their patients.

By afternoon, the larger private hospitals start rationing their supply to make it last till the end of the day and by night major government hospitals start reporting shortages. This cycle has been repeated for three days now, with the smaller hospitals either getting help from Good Samaritans supplying individual oxygen cylinders or police helping them get their supplies.

And every night, the larger private hospitals and government hospitals have fought tooth and nail just for the oxygen supply to arrive in the nick of time — but not before the entire process starts all over again.