On April 22, the government issued an order banning the supply of liquid oxygen to industry in view of increased demand for medical oxygen.
The government will take a decision to lift restrictions on use of liquid oxygen for industrial purposes “as soon as possible”, said a senior government official.
“We are talking to State governments to find out what are their needs for medical oxygen. After confirmation from the State governments as well as the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare whatever needs to be done to revive the continuous process industries, we will do as soon as possible,” said Giridhar Aramane, Secretary, Ministry of Road Transport and Highways who is the convenor of the Empower Group 4 that oversees the country’s demand for medical oxygen and its logistics.
The official said that the current demand for medical oxygen was down to 5,200 metric tonnes per day from a peak of 8,900 metric tonnes last month. This was expected to drop further to 3, 000 metric tonnes in the next one week.
On April 22, the government issued an order banning the supply of liquid oxygen to industry in view of increased demand for medical oxygen.
The Empowered Group is also consulting medical professionals to assess the demand for medical oxygen for the next wave.
“We are trying to foresee certain scenarios in consultation with experts to determine how the oxygen situation can be improved in case of any future flare up? We are consulting medical professionals. In two weeks we plan to do basic future planning. But we want to make it clear that we can’t really foresee or predict what is going to happen,” Mr Aramane said, adding, “ those who are blaming the government in hindsight on O2 and other issues did not warn us to be prepared for four lakh cases. The worst of projections were also not for more than a lakh of cases per day. All these people criticising the government should understand that such fierce form of second wave couldn’t have been dealt with by any government like we did in such a short time.”