Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in Delhi gets fresh oxygen supply

We provided oxygen to the patients manually when the pressure dipped in the ICU, Rana had said earlier in the day.

Grappling with depleting oxygen levels, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital here got a tanker on Friday night to meet its requirements for the life saving-gas for its patients, officials said.

The hospital was anxiously waiting for a refill since the last supply reached the healthcare facility, located in central Delhi, around 9:20 am.

''We have received fresh supply of oxygen and that will help our patients in a big way,'' Sir Ganga Ram Hospital Chairman Dr D S Rana told PTI.

''We have had a severe scarcity of medical oxygen but the state government and the Centre have worked towards ensuring supply. We are grateful to them on behalf of our patients,'' he said.

The tanker has supplied oxygen for an hour and a half, Rana said, adding, ''Hopefully, by that time, the Inox tanker would come.'' He said the hospital will make every possible effort to ''save every patient that comes to us''.

Twenty-five COVID patients in the elite hospital died in 24 hours and the lives of many more hung in precarious balance on Friday with the scramble for oxygen getting more frantic in hospitals across the national capital and its suburbs.

Sources said ''low-pressure oxygen'' could be the likely cause of the deaths in the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, one of the city's biggest and most high-profile hospitals, where the healthcare staff had to manually ventilate patients in the ICU and the emergency department. The hospital announced the deaths shortly after 8 am.

''It is wrong to say the deaths occurred due to a shortage of oxygen. We provided oxygen to the patients manually when the pressure dipped in the ICU,'' Rana had said earlier in the day.