MUMBAI: Over the last one week, the state’s average oxygen requirement has gone up to 300-350MT from the average 200MT. With active Covid cases jumping nearly 1,900% in the last two weeks, the increase is not yet alarming.
Use of 700MT of oxygen is one of the baseline parameters the state has set for imposing a lockdown. The peak demand during the second wave was around 1,800MT.
The oxygen supply accounts for both Covid and non-Covid medical use. Senior officials said not all the additional oxygen requirement is going towards treating patients, nearly 50-60MT is being used to fill the storage tanks kept ready for a surge.
Officials said at the moment, 3% of the total active cases in the state are on oxygen support. “With cases rising, the demand for oxygen has gone up in the last few days, but it is not alarming,” said a senior official. “So far, the cases are mild, but the exact picture will be clear once smaller and lower vaccinated regions start reporting cases,” said another official.
Mumbai has not seen any significant surge in demand for oxygen though active cases have jumped from 4,295 to 1,17,437—a rise of 2600% in just 15 days, said civic officials. Currently, 3,129 of 11,312 oxygen beds are occupied.
Civic officials said the city is nowhere near the peak requirement of 260MT seen during the second wave. “We have not even gone anywhere close to 200MT,” said P Velrasu, BMC's additional municipal (projects). Last week, a civic official had said the city was using 20-30MT.
After the 2021 crisis, the corporation has created a combined storage and generation capacity of 900MT.
Dr Neelam Andrade, dean of the jumbo centre in Goregaon, said only eight ward patients out of over 800 were on oxygen. “Since lung involvement is limited, we haven’t seen a massive jump in requirement for oxygen yet,” she said.
ICU patients require higher oxygen flow, she said. “We still see patients coming with bad lungs. They are mainly unvaccinated and with several comorbidities. That number also hasn’t been out of control yet,” she said.
