Oxygen demand drops, Punjab heaves sign of relief
Nitin Jain
Tribune News Service
Ludhiana, May 29
In what appears to be a sign of gradual retreat and plateauing of the devastating second Covid wave, the demand of medical oxygen in the state has dropped considerably.
Sanitisation drive by Congress in Abohar
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Giving a much-needed respite and a sigh of relief to the government, the consumption of life-saving gas for both Covid and non-Covid patients has come down by almost 70 metric tonne (MT) in the past 10 days, officials said.
Data compiled by the Health and Family Welfare Department revealed the medical oxygen demand had dipped to a record low of 236.8 MT on May 26 after touching its peak at 304.1 MT on May 17. This included 274.4 MT for Covid and 29.7 MT for non-Covid use on May 17 and 209.3 MT for Covid and 27.5 MT for non-Covid consumption on May 26.
With the constant decline in the daily cases and also the number of critical patients put on ventilator support during the past 10 days, the state has been witnessing a decrease in the demand of medical oxygen on a day-on-day basis. Official figures showed the consumption of life-saving gas fell to 303.4 MT on May 18, further to 296.8 MT (May 19), 286.9 MT (May 20), 281.5 MT (May 21), 278.7 MT (May 22), 268.2 MT (May 23), 263.6 MT (May 24), and 244.5 MT on (May 25).
With the projected daily demand of 235 MT, Punjab has been allocated 215 MT medical oxygen by the Centre from outside the state, of which only 90 to 100 MT was now being lifted on an average daily from outside in view of the decline in the oxygen consumption. Besides, the state was producing 32 MT life-saving gas from its own resources. The state was left with 450 MT excess life-saving gas after consuming 7,971.2 MT of the total available 8,421.2 MT stock from April 26 to May 24.
