Six Pvt Hospitals Run Out Of O2, Hang By A Thread; Scores Reporting Acute Shortages

Capital gasps for 3rd day in a row

- Nikita Jain And Chhavianshika Singh

NEW DELHI: Amid the unprecedented oxygen crisis that the Capital is facing along with the rest of the country and as Covid emergency wards see patients dying outside hospitals every day, the third day of the crisis here saw relatively smaller private hospitals in the city first run out of medical oxygen, before bigger hospitals started running out of their stocks that were just about replenished the night before in the nick of time.

On Thursday, data compiled by the Delhi government showed that at least six private hospitals had completely exhausted their oxygen supply by evening. The Shanti Mukund Hospital in Karkardooma, one of these hospitals made desperate pleas to get its supply back and its CEO Dr SK Saggar also broke down on camera saying, “How can we tell patients family that we don’t have oxygen for their kin... the patients will die.”

Eventually, the hospital put up a signboard saying that no admissions could be allowed as the hospital had no more oxygen, following which patients had started to be discharged to be shifted to other facilities.

Dr Saggar said, “We’re hardly left with any oxygen. We’ve requested doctors to discharge patients, whoever can be discharged...It (Oxygen) may last for 2 hrs or something.”

And in the mayhem, patients and doctors started running pillar to post looking either for a bed or for oxygen.