CHANDIGARH: With Covid cases and fatality in the state rising, Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Monday directed the Health Department to step up indigenous manufacturing of medical Oxygen to supplement the current supplies in order to ensure that there is no shortage of this critical commodity to tackle any future crisis.
The state, which has been procuring all its medical Oxygen from neighbouring areas, has now decided to also go in for internal manufacturing to meet any shortfall that could arise with Covid cases spiking in the state. Till now, Punjab was procuring all its medical Oxygen supplies from other states, including Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Haryana. However, as cases continue to spike, and amid reports of Oxygen shortages in several parts of the country, the Chief Minister stressed the need to generate additional supplies through internal manufacturing also.
In line with this decision, the Health Department has so far issued license to one industrial Oxygen supplier in Punjab to manufacture Medical Oxygen, while six packaging units have been allowed to package Oxygen for medical use. With this, the state now has internal capacity to manufacture 800 medical Oxygen cylinders and packaging of 2000 units per day, and the government hopes that with the supplies already being procured from other states, this would help cope with any further escalation in demand in the coming weeks.
The state government has also appointed a Nodal Officer to monitor the supply and demand of Medical Oxygen amid spiralling cases of Covid, and the Chief Minister has asked the Health Department to ensure that indigenous production and packaging is further scaled up to meet any eventuality.
During a virtual meeting to assess the situation arising out of the pandemic, Captain Amarinder directed the Department to ensure that there is no shortage of Oxygen for treatment of Covid patients in the state.
The Chief Minister was informed that the state currently had adequate supplies of Oxygen to meet the demand triggered by an increasing number of Covid cases. He was further told that of the 6653 Covid patients admitted at the Government Medical Colleges (GMCs) in the state, 5269 had recovered and been discharged, with 550 still under treatment.
Chief Secretary Vini Mahajan apprised the meeting that Punjab is following the 10-day discharge policy as per ICMR guidelines. Any positive patient admitted to Level 1 can be discharged on the 10th day, if the patient has remained asymptomatic for the last 3 days of admission. Further, to manage the increasing number of cases, it has been decided to add 50 L3 beds in Faridkot Medical College, she said.
A special invitee to the meeting, Ambuj Roy, Professor of Cardiology, AIIMS, who has been studying the mortality figures in Punjab, said the possibility of mutation of the virus was being studied. Dr KK Talwar, head of the Group of Experts on Health for the Punjab government, said the panel would be sending samples to IMTECH to check on the nature of the virus and ascertain if it has mutated in the last one month, in comparison with the samples sent earlier.
Roy said the majority of the Covid deaths in Punjab had taken place after August 6. At 2.96% the Case Fatality Rate (CFR) in Punjab was higher than the national average of 1.65%, as was the deaths per million at 78.5 (national average 58.3), he noted, but added these figures were still better than many states in the country. In fact, Punjab’s positivity rate of 5.72% was much better than the national average of 8.47%.