News
Probe ordered after Agra hospital owner claims 22 deaths in ‘Oxygen mock drill’ in viral video
Uttar Pradesh government has launched an investigation into a purported video of a Agra hospital owner who can be heard saying, he snapped the oxygen supply of critical patients “as an experiment to know who all are going to survive”. As per the conversation in the clip, Agra’s Paras hospital shut off oxygen supply on April 27 for five minutes in a “mock drill” amid what the owner claimed was an acute shortage of oxygen . The incident is said to have claimed 22 lives.
“We were told that even the Chief Minister cannot get oxygen, so start discharging patients. Modi Nagar is dry. We started counseling families. Some were willing to listen but the others said they would not leave. I said ok let’s do a mock drill. We will find out who will die and who will survive. So we did that at 7 am. A mock drill was done. No one knows. Then we identified 22 patients. We realised they would die. This was done for 5 minutes. They started turning blue,” the hospital manager and owner, ain has denied the allegations and claimed that the videos were distorted.Jain, can be heard saying. The hospital also has a Covid facility within its premises.
At the time at least 96 Covid patients admitted to the hospital at the time. As per claims in the viral video, out of 96 only 74 patients survived. Four videos of Jain have gone viral in which he is narrating the story.
Reacting to the video, Agra District Magistrate Prabhu N Singh issued a statement claiming there was no death due to lack of oxygen on that day the alleged video was recorded. However, he said a probe would be conducted.
“Initially, there was some panic and shortage but we sorted all that out in 48 hours. In this hospital, there have been seven Covid deaths on the 26th and 27th of April. The hospital also has a lot of other ICU beds. There is no truth that 22 people died but we will carry out an inquiry,” Mr Singh said in a statement.
After the video went viral , the hospital owner rejected the allegations and claimed that his statement has been misconstrued. Speaking with Times of India, Jain said, “We had conducted a mock drill to identify critical patients and better serve them. Four Covid-19 patients died on April 26 and three on April 27.” Asked if a total of 22 had died due to lack of oxygen, he said he “did not have the exact numbers”.
