The Delhi government inflated its oxygen requirement by four times during the peak of the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic in May, ...
The Delhi government inflated its oxygen requirement by four times during the peak of the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic in May, several news outlets reported on Friday. They attributed the information to a committee constituted by the Supreme Court in May to conduct an oxygen audit for Delhi.
However, a closer look at the 163-page “interim report”, part of an affidavit filed by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in the Supreme Court on June 22, suggests that the four times figure is a gross exaggeration.
In fact, a note by Max Healthcare’s Dr Sandeep Budhiraja, the only non-government member of the committee, attached as an annexure to the report makes that abundantly clear. Budhiraja’s note clearly indicates that the oxygen requirement that the committee took as the basis for its calculations was itself inaccurate and an underestimate of Delhi’s actual requirement.
Yet the committee, headed by director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences Dr Randeep Guleria, chose to emphasise the claim that Delhi’s oxygen demand was four times its requirement by italicising the section that details the calculation, ignoring the fact that it was based on incomplete data.
The Delhi government’s representative in the committee Bhupinder S Bhalla, the state’s principal secretary (home), did not...
