Orders are already given to ensure 100 per cent oxygen supply for health sector: Rupani

Gandhinagar: Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani said the State government has ordered 100 per cent use of all oxygen produced to be used for health sector. He said the labor department, police etc are working to ensure that all oxygen produced is utilised only in health sector. Rupani said, in earlier peak of Covid cases in Gujarat, the utilisation of oxygen was 250 tonnes, while in latest it has reached above 700 tonnes. Rupani said, if at all at any place, oxygen shortage is felt, the government can be contacted immediately for supply.

Rupani said a 1400-bed full fledged covid hospital is being set up at Gujarat University Exhibition Hall in GMDC ground in Ahmedabad and it will start taking patients by 24 April.

On Remdesivir supply to Uttar Pradesh, Rupani said, Gujarat based pharma company Zydus that produces Remdesivir injections can obviously supply injections across the country and so that it supplied injections to Uttar Pradesh also. Daily stock of 25,000 injections for Gujarat is continuing and it is a secured arrangement. Rupani said, due to shortage of enough stock of Remdesivir, the government has to decide some priority, so that the Government has given first priority to Government hospitals and second priority to private hospitals. If supply from manufacturers increase, the government will surely ensure supply beyond hospitals also.

When asked when does he think, the current wave in Gujarat will start going down, Rupani said it’s difficult to say, but a panel of expert doctors who are working with the Government have suggested that any such peak lasts for 60 days, and Gujarat will complete 60 days of this peak around 20th April following which cases may stabilise first and then go down.

On RTPCR reports, Rupani said the government has added 11 machines for RTPCR tests recently and more efforts will be done. He said the total number of tests for Covid19 are up from 50,000 in March to 1.50 lakh now. Rupani said the government has added 18,000 beds in last 15 days and 8,000 more beds are planned to be added now. Rupani said there’s no shortage of ventilators during this wave, as the Central government has supplied 5,000 ventilators.

DeshGujarat