India producing 9,500 MT of liquid medical oxygen per day to tackle COVID-19: PM Modi

From 900 metric tonnes of liquid medical oxygen in a day, India has boosted it to 9,500 MT tonnes a day, an increase of almost 10%, says Prime Minister Narendra Modi. On his monthly radio programme Mann Ki Baat, he said the production of liquid medical oxygen has gone up 10 times.

In April, as the severe second wave of COVID-19 infections swept across the country, there were multiple SOS from hospitals. Many sent alarms ringing saying they were left with just a few hours of the lifesaving gas.

PM Modi highlighted that during the second wave of COVID-19, a major challenge was to supply medical oxygen to remove areas. “To counter challenges that the country faced, drivers of Cryogenic oxygen tankers helped by working on war footing and saved lives of lakhs of people.” He pointed out the role of the armed forces in making sure oxygen supplies reach the far corners of the land.

“This fight against COVID-19 is so big that like Railways, our country is working through all three routes – water, land and sky (Navy, Army and Air Force). Work of transporting empty tankers to oxygen plants by Air Force planes is being done, while the work of making new oxygen plants is also being completed,” the prime minister said.

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Meanwhile, Maruti announced that its enhancing production of oxygen generators by small-scale units to meet demand. It had earlier pitched medium- and big-sized hospitals to install oxygen pressure swing adsorption (PSA) generators. The automaker has four oxygen PSA generator plants at three government hospitals in Haryana.