Delhi government to import 21 oxygen plants from France: Kejriwal
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today announced that the city government has decided to import 18 oxygen tankers from Bangkok, Thailand while France will send 21 ready-to-use oxygen plants. The decision has been taken as the national capital faces an acute shortage of medical oxygen amid rising COVID-19 cases across the country. Here are more details on this.
"Delhi government has decided to import 18 oxygen tankers from Bangkok, they'll start arriving from tomorrow," CM Kejriwal said at a press conference on Tuesday. He informed that they have requested the central government to allow the use of Indian Air Force planes for the task. "Talks are on, I am very hopeful that talks will be successful," he added.
About the oxygen plants from France, Kejriwal said, "We are importing 21 ready-to-use oxygen plants from France. They can be brought to use immediately. These will be installed at different hospitals." He assured that in the next one month, Delhi will have 44 oxygen plants, of which eight will be set up by the Centre and 36 will be installed by the city government.
A few days ago, Kejriwal had written to the Chief Ministers of all states as well as several industrialists, requesting them to provide spare medical oxygen to the capital city. "In the past few days, I wrote to various industrialists and state governments seeking help in this respect. We have received tremendous support from all quarters and are hopeful," he was quoted as saying.
Delhi has been grappling with an acute shortage of medical oxygen and other equipment as coronavirus cases rose exponentially in the past few weeks there. The city on Monday logged 20,201 new COVID-19 infections and a record 380 deaths. Further, the positivity rate climbed to a whopping 35% - meaning that one in every three persons tested for the infection was positive.
India is currently battling a dreadful second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, reporting lakhs of new infections and hundreds of related deaths daily amid an overburdened health infrastructure. In the last 24 hours, the country reported over 3.23 lakh new cases and 2,771 fatalities. This is the sixth consecutive day that India registered more than three lakh cases.
