Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said that the production of liquid medical oxygen in India has grown by more than 10 times amid the...
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said that the production of liquid medical oxygen in India has grown by more than 10 times amid the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
“In normal times, India was producing 900 metric tonnes of liquid medical oxygen every day,” Modi said during his monthly radio programme, “Mann ki baat”. “It has now increased to 9,500 metric tonnes per day.”
The prime minister added that supplying medical oxygen to remote places was a huge challenge but the drivers of cryogenic oxygen tankers, the Air Force and Railways worked on war-footing and helped save lakhs of lives.
In April, the Central government had said India was consuming less than 60% of its daily oxygen production for medical use. “The country has a daily production capacity of 7127 MT [metric tonnes] of oxygen per day,” said the health ministry in a press statement on April 15. “On 12th April 2021, the medical oxygen consumption in the country was 3842 MT [metric tonnes], that is 54 percent of the daily production capacity.” Additionally, the ministry claimed there were stocks in excess of 50,000 metric tonnes.
India struggled with a grave oxygen crisis in the second wave of the pandemic. The acute shortages of oxygen and medicines forced...
