With unending complaints of Oxygen scarcity pouring in from across the state, a special ` Oxygen Express’ train was on its way to Bokaro to fetch liquid oxygen to meet the demand of hospitals in Uttar Pradesh.
“Liquid medical oxygen (LMO) would be brought by this Oxygen Express which is expected to return in a couple of days,” Additional Chief Secretary Awanish Awasthi said in Lucknow on Thursday.
The Oxygen Express is a ‘roll-on roll-off ’ service with road tankers placed on wagons. Railway officials said the that train carrying the tankers would be given passage on priority during its journey.
A senior Railway official said that the train departed late as the load (wagons) needed to be re-adjusted due to the thunderstorm and was expected to reach Bokaro on Thursday night. Thereafter, a green corridor would be created for its smooth return journey carrying liquid oxygen in the tankers to Lucknow.
On Wednesday evening, Railway Minister Piyush Goel tweeted that the ‘Oxygen Express’ was being dispatched from Lucknow to Bokaro to tackle oxygen shortage in the state. “The oOxygen Express has crossed Varanasi. To make the train run faster, a Green corridor has been built so that the train can reach its destination as soon as possible,” Goyal said in his tweet, which was widely circulated by officials in Lucknow.
Last week, the Uttar Pradesh government had written to Railway Board seeking transportation of Liquid Medical Oxygen (LMO) from oxygen plants in Jamshedpur and Bokaro (Jharkhand) and Rourkela (Odisha) through Oxygen Express.
Manufacturers prepare liquid oxygen with 99.5% purity, which is stored in jumbo tankers and transported to distributors in cryogenic tankers at a specified temperature. At the distributor’s level, a process of re-gasification is followed to convert the oxygen into gaseous form and fill jumbo cylinders and dura cylinders. These are then sent to smaller suppliers or directly to hospitals.
“The problem is that the present demand is high, but there are not enough cylinders and tankers to store and transport oxygen,” an industry expert said.
An official said that the shortage of such tankers has led to a significant delay in inter-state transportation of oxygen from manufacturers to hospitals. “Do not delve on Lucknow and Varanasi alone, think about smaller centres like Hardoi, Bahraich and Sonebhadra where medical facilities and healthcare centres face a bigger crisis due to longer transportation time,” the official said.
Meanwhile, complaints of scarcity of oxygen poured in from across the state with several hospitals asking relatives to take their patients away. In Meerut 12 patients were shifted from private hospitals to LLRM Medical College and NCR Medical College due to oxygen crunch. In Barabanki, private hospitals have written to the DM saying their stock of oxygen was dying. In Allahabad, SRN Medical college also complained about shortage of oxygen.
A flurry of SOS messages on Twitter and other social media platforms showed the severity of the oxygen shortage in Lucknow, Noida and Ghaziabad. “Need immediate Oxygen cylinder for my father. Please help,” wrote Satish Sharma. Another person tweeted about scarcity of oxygen in a private nursing home. Ankita of Rajaji[uram tweeted “ Please help Covid – oxygen cylinder /hospitalization required immediately.” Her tweet was retweeted by Neelesh Mishra.
A senior official admitted that there was a crisis because the UP government released about 132.55 tonnes of oxygen for Delhi which led to some crisis in western UP.