WARANGAL: Even as the second Oxygen Express pulls into the State on Tuesday, various hospitals in Warangal city, which is slowly becoming a hotbed of COVID cases after the recent civic polls, are facing an acute shortage of the depleting resource.
Families of COVID-19 patients are asked by private hospitals to procure medical oxygen on their own, while some are even refusing to admit patients that are in a critical condition. Left without options, families are taking their kin to Hyderabad for treatment.
MGM Hospital, a government hospital, gets 200 to 250 people who complain of COVID symptoms every day. The hospital too is short of oxygen. The superintendent of the hospital, Dr K Nagarjuna Reddy, told Express that private hospital authorities asking families to take their relative to MGM Hospital when they in a critical condition.
"Soon after we put them on a ventilator, these patients die and the families blame us of negligence. We urge the people to think if it is possible to save a patient who is shifted from one hospital to another in the final stage. We are working on providing the best treatment to Covid-19 patients," he said.
"MGM Hospital has two medical tankers. The present oxygen will be available for 36 hours and we expect the oxygen tanker will reach us late on Wednesday night," Reddy said.
Sources reveal that close to 10 to 15 COVID patients die every day in MGM Hospital but officials are under reporting the toll. An attendant at a gas station, who did not want to be named, said oxygen tankers were reaching Hyderabad, but still there was no supply to Warangal.