NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court-appointed National Task Force (NTF) said that it does recognise the hard work and efforts made by the Centre and the proactive steps taken by it on oxygen management during the first wave of the Covid-19 last year. The 12-member panel appreciated the Centre for management of the pandemic of the present magnitude and said that many of its recommendations were already under implementation and work on others has also already commenced.
The report said the central government facilitated steps to enhance the availability of liquid oxygen and storage capacity of liquid medical oxygen (LMO) and states were supported for establishment of PSA oxygen generation plants, many of which will be commissioned by June end.
The panel said National Health Authority (NHA) is currently developing an Oxygen Demand Aggregation System (ODAS) to ascertain demand for medical oxygen from all facilities based on bed availability and occupancy, and aggregating them at the state level.
It said the action taken during the first wave of the pandemic last year helped to quickly put in place the mechanisms for enhanced production of LMO this year in April 2021 when the demand for LMO saw a sudden spike, touching an average of 5,500 MTs a day by the third week of April 2021, and rapidly increasing to a daily average consumption of 7,100 MT in the fourth week of April 2021 and further increased to the highest consumption level of 8,943 MTs a day on May 9th this year.
The panel said licences were issued for industrial gas manufacturers to manufacture medical oxygen, on directions of Empowered Group - 2, the manufacturers of liquid oxygen enhanced daily production of liquid oxygen, new LMO units were started at Modinagar and Pune and liquid oxygen available with the steel plants was also used for medical oxygen.