Hospitals, COVID patients in UP pin hope on ‘Oxygen Express’ to offset acute shortage in state

Hospitals and COVID patients in Uttar Pradesh are pinning their hopes on the special ‘Oxygen Express' train, which is expected to bring oxygen from Bokaro on Saturday, to offset the scarcity of this vital component in the fight against COVID.

“Liquid medical oxygen (LMO) would be brought through this Oxygen Express which is expected to return within 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 train carrying the oxygen tankers would be given passage on priority during its journey.

A senior railway official said that the train departed late because of a thunderstorm and the load (wagons) needed to be re-adjusted. It would reach Bokaro on Thursday night. Thereafter, a green corridor would be created for a smooth return journey of the train carrying liquid oxygen in the tankers to Lucknow.

Last week, Uttar Pradesh government had written to the Railway Board seeking transportation of Liquid Medical Oxygen (LMO) from oxygen plants in Jamshedpur and Bokaro in Jharkhand and Rourkela (Odisha).

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 level, a process of re-gasification is followed to convert the oxygen into a gaseous form and fill it in jumbo cylinders and dura cylinders. These cylinders then go to smaller suppliers or directly to hospitals.

“The problem is that demand is very high, but there are not enough cylinders and tankers to store and transport the 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 talk about Lucknow and Varanasi, think about smaller centres like Hardoi, Bahraich and Sonebhadra where the 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. Many hospitals have asked relatives of COVID patients to take them away.

In Meerut, 12 patients were shifted from private hospitals to LLRM Medical College and NCR Medical College because of scarcity of oxygen.

In Barabanki, private hospitals have written a letter to the DM saying that their stock of oxygen was on the verge of getting finished.

In Allahabad, SRN Medical college also complained about shortage of oxygen.

A flurry of SOS messages on Twitter and other social media platforms show the severity of the oxygen shortage in Lucknow, Noida and Ghaziabad among other places in UP.

“Need immediate Oxygen cylinder for my father. Please help,” wrote one Satish Sharma. Another person tweeted about scarcity of oxygen in a private nursing home. Ankita, a resident of Rajajipuram in Lucknow tweeted, ‘Please help Covid – oxygen cylinder/hospitalization required immediately’. Her tweet was retweeted by Neelesh Mishra.

UP Health Minister Sidharthnath Singh said that there is a crisis because the Uttar Pradesh government released about 132.55 tonnes of oxygen for Delhi. “This transfer of oxygen has led to some crisis in western UP,” he said.