Three-pronged strategy in place to meet oxygen shortage: Yediyurappa

Bengaluru: Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa has asserted that his government has launched three-pronged strategy to meet the increased oxygen requirement. The first of it is by increasing supply of Liquid Medical Oxygen (LMO). The other two include massive scaling up of localized generation capacity through oxygen generators and large scale procurement of concentrators and cylinders.

"The government of India has increased the allocation of oxygen from 965 MT to 1015 MT. We are lifting the entire allocation given to us from within the State and making efforts to bring as much as possible from other States and, in addition, we have received 40 MT of oxygen from Bahrain and another 100 MT from Kuwait. We have brought 120 MT of oxygen from Jamshedpur through a train," he said.

The CM added that action was being taken to increase oxygen generation capacity in the State to prepare for a potential 3rd wave.

Ola and GiveIndia are offering up to 1,000 free oxygen concentrators for patients in home isolation. A similar mobile oxygen convenience service through OxyBus has been launched to enable quick mobile repurposing of oxygen needs near government hospitals and triage centers.

Yediyurappa announced that in order to help reduce shortage in districts and taluks 10,000 oxygen cylinders would be procured.

"We have already received 730 oxygen cylinders in the last 15-20 days. Out of them 380 have been given by the Centre and 350 came from foreign countries. Three thousand concentrators have already been distributed across the State. An additional 7,000 from the government and CSR partners would be distributed," he elaborated.

On opposition criticism over shortage of vaccines, Yediyurappa said so far 1.10 crore doses have been supplied by the Union government, of which 99.5 lakh are Covishield and 10.9 lakh Covaxin.

The State is preparing to procure 5 crore doses for the 18-44 age group. The purchase order for three crore doses (two crore doses of Covishield and 1 crore of Covaxin) have been placed apart from the global tenders for an additional two crore.

"It is necessary to complete the 2nd dose as early as possible to give full protection to the people who have taken the 1st dose. Hence, we have decided to utilize the entire stock available with us for the 2nd dose. The Co-Win portal is found to have certain limitations as far as selection of vaccination centre is concerned leading to chaos. To better manage the vaccination process we are coming up with a technology solution soon after which we will relaunch the vaccine programme for the 18-44 age group," he said.