This story is from May 28, 2021

With oxygen demand down to nearly half of April, Ngp starts supply to other dists

With oxygen demand down to nearly half of April, Ngp starts supply to other dists
Nagpur: The district’s requirement of medical oxygen has reduced significantly in May. Unlike April, Nagpur has stopped taking oxygen from other states this month. On the other hand, the local production has increased to such an extent that Nagpur is now supplying oxygen to neighbouring districts of Vidarbha as well as adjacent states.
“From peak demand of above 164 MT oxygen per day in April, the requirement has now declined to under 70 MT per day.
On Thursday, we distributed 64MT oxygen to private and government hospitals in the city,” said FDA’s drug inspector Satish Chavan who is in-charge of oxygen supply.
Nagpur now supplies oxygen to Amravati, Akola, Buldhana, Nanded in Maharashtra and Chhindawara in Madhya Pradesh. While the supplies from Odisha and Bhilai have stopped, local companies are generating more than 200 MT oxygen now.
Hospitals also confirmed that the requirement of medical oxygen has gone down significantly as compared to last month.
“The oxygen requirement, which had gone up to 24,000 cubic metre on April 28 has reduced to 7,000 cubic metre on May 25 at Government Medical College and Hospital (GMCH),” said an official. The requirement is going down constantly as number of under-treatment Covid-19 patients has seen a significant drop.
As on Thursday, Nagpur district had 9,072 patients under treatment. More than 6,300 of them are in home isolation. This means, more than 50% of the near 5,000 beds available in government and private Covid hospitals are vacant.

But patients are not getting any benefit of the improved availability of oxygen. This is because in private hospitals patients are still paying the same price for O2 as they were during the peak of second wave.
“Hospitals are getting oxygen at rates 3-4 times higher than the normal rates,” said Dr Anup Marar, convener of the Vidarbha Hospitals Association and added, “Suppliers are charging under the head of ‘Covid mitigating expenses’. We have reported this issue to the NMC but no decision has been taken on it. The requirement has gone down and we have stopped importing from other states. Then what is the point in charging additional rates?”
Oxygen Surplus now
- During peak of second wave on April 27, Nagpur’s O2 need was 165 MT
- After exactly one month on May 27, it has dropped to 64MT
- Surplus O2 from Nagpur is now being provided to other districts/stated
- Nagpur supplies 20 MT O2 to Akola, 10 MT to Buldhana, 5MT to Amravati
- Chhindwara (MP) gets 15 MT Oxygen from city, Nanded also gets 15 MT daily
- O2 is also sent to Chandrapur and Wardha as per need
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About the Author
Chaitanya Deshpande

Chaitanya Deshpande is Principal Correspondent at The Times of India, Nagpur. He has a PG degree in English literature and Mass communication. Chaitanya covers public health, medical issues, medical education, research in the fields of medicine, microbiology, biotechnology. He also covers culture, fine arts, theatre, folk arts, literature, and life. Proficient in Marathi and Hindi along with English, Chaitanya loves music, theatre and literature of all three languages.

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