Vinay Srivastava’s oxygen saturation level was dangerously low when he tweeted around 8 pm on April 16 to say that no hospital in Lucknow w...
Vinay Srivastava’s oxygen saturation level was dangerously low when he tweeted around 8 pm on April 16 to say that no hospital in Lucknow was responding to his phone calls.
Oxygen saturation in the blood below the level of 94 is considered a matter of concern for people suffering from Covid-19. Srivastava said his level was 52.
As the 65-year-old freelance journalist’s complaint went viral on Twitter, the Uttar Pradesh chief minister’s media advisor responded to him next afternoon, asking for more details. By then, Srivastava’s oxygen levels had fallen to 31.
— Vinay Srivastava (@VinaySr18286715) April 17, 2021
At 4.20 pm on Saturday, his son, Harshit Srivastava, tweeted to say his father had died – waiting for an ambulance. “We did not get anything,” he told Scroll.in on the phone. “I called every number for an oxygen cylinder but no one picked up.”
About 7 km from their home, the government-run Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Civil Hospital has been waiting for an oxygen generation plant. It is one of 150 district hospitals across India for which the Central government floated tenders in October, eight months into the coronavirus pandemic, to create units that can produce medical oxygen on site.
But six months later, the oxygen plant is yet to be installed. Had...
