Oxygen crisis: Uttar Pradesh to get 47 new plants under PM CARES fund amid acute shortage

As many as 47 districts of Uttar Pradesh including Lucknow, will get medical oxygen plants under the PM CARES Fund to overcome the oxygen shortage faced by COVID-19 patients in the state. According to a government release, UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath thanked the Centre for the step and said that the decision will prove to be a milestone in ensuring an uninterrupted supply of oxygen amid tremendous pressure on healthcare facilities due to the COVID-19 surge.

Oxygen plants will be set up in Lucknow, Varanasi, Gorakhpur, Agra, Aligarh, Prayagraj, Meerut, Mathura, Gautam Buddh Nagar, Ghaziabad, Kanpur, Jhansi, Moradabad among other cities of the state. Meanwhile, CM Adityanath has taken cognisance of hospitals pasting notices about the shortage of oxygen and said that these incidents will be thoroughly investigated.

"If the notice is pasted only to create fear in the minds of the people, then strict action should be taken against such hospitals," the CM ordered during a review meeting.

Digital Oxygen Monitoring in UP

Uttar Pradesh has become the first state to implement an oxygen monitoring system to track the demand for oxygen and ensure its supply in the quickest possible time by tracking the real-time location of the tankers. The herculean task to design and digitise the system was done in 24 hours and within two days more than 40 tankers were tagged to the monitoring system.

"With the help of the system, you can virtually see where the tanker is with the driver's details and from which plant has it filled the oxygen. So if any hospital raises an SOS, the tanker nearest to the hospital can be sent to supply oxygen," Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Awanish Kumar Awasthi said.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath during a virtual interaction on Saturday with editors of different newspapers, said that there is no shortage of drugs like Remdesivir in Uttar Pradesh. When the demand increased, a state aircraft was sent to Ahmedabad and the drug was procured directly from the pharma company, he said while adding that nearly 8,000 centres have been set up where COVID-19 vaccines will be administered free of cost to all people above the age of 18 from May 1.

To ensure the availability of adequate doses of the COVID-19 vaccine in Uttar Pradesh, the state government has ordered 50 lakh doses of Covishield and Covaxin each from manufacturing companies. 

(With inputs from agency)