VIJAYAWADA: Health Minister Alla Kali Krishna Srinivas (Nani) said the government has taken all the required measures—right from setting up oxygen monitoring cell in every hospital to appointing three senior officials to overlook the supply of oxygen from neighbouring states—to ensure that incidents such as the RUIA hospital tragedy do not recur.
The Group of Ministers (GoM) on Covid-19 headed by Alla Nani met on Wednesday and took stock of the Covid situation in the state. The meeting focused on oxygen and vaccination. Alla Nani said efforts are on to further strengthen the oxygen supply network, and Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking more oxygen allocation to the state in view of the increasing Covid cases
He said the committee has discussed key issues like oxygen supply, testing, vaccination, beds and steps to be taken to bring down the cases. “The Chief Minister has given clear instructions to all district collectors to inspect the oxygen pipelines and complete their repair works, if any, on war footing,” he said and added 49 mini oxygen plants are to be set up in teaching, district and area hospitals across the state.
Nani said the need for oxygen in the second wave is high as the number of patients in need of O2 beds has doubled. Hence, three senior IAS officers were deployed to monitor the oxygen transport from Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Odisha. “During the first wave, the state hardly used 240 MT of oxygen on a daily basis, when only 50 per cent of designated oxygen beds were occupied. However, in the current scenario, the daily requirement is far more, and even 590 MT is proving to be insufficient.
Although the state is equipped with 27,500 oxygen beds, another 10,000 beds will come up due to the shortage,” he added “All measures are being taken to reduce oxygen wastage, by setting up monitoring cells in each hospital. Also, the storage capacity is being increased to 600 MT from the existing 517 MT.”
On vaccination, he said the government, which is trying to complete the vaccination programme in an expeditious manner, has written to the Centre requesting six crore doses. “We have already proven our capability to administer over six lakh doses of vaccines in a day,” he said
Alla Nani slammed opposition leader Chandrababu Naidu for making irresponsible remarks against the state government and creating panic among the public. He made it clear that they had no objections to buying vaccines from manufacturers but the control of vaccine supply is still with the Centre. “Chandrababu Naidu can supply vaccines to the state by using his kinship with Bharat Biotech. Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy has already made it clear that he wanted the vaccination process to be free and would not hesitate to spend Rs 1,600 crore on it.”