CHENNAI: At least 19 deaths at government hospitals in Chennai, Chengalpet and Vellore occurred because of technical issues such as inadequate pressure and problems in the oxygen pipeline at the peak of the Covid-19 infections, but there were no deaths because of inadequate oxygen, health minister Ma Subramanian has said.
“None of these deaths happened due to lack of oxygen,” he said, replying to question on why the state government was maintaining that there were no deaths due to oxygen when chief minister M K Stalin had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi about 13 deaths in Chengalpet while seeking better oxygen allotment for Tamil Nadu on May 7. In his letter, Stalin had said, “The availability of oxygen in Tamil Nadu is very severe and there was an unfortunate incident of 13 deaths a Chengalpet 2 days ago (sic)’.
At the peak of the Covid-19 second wave in April and May, several hospitals across the state – public and private – reported acute shortage of oxygen. The state had set up a war room and a team of officials was working overtime to bring oxygen from other states and countries.
On Wednesday, the minister told reporters that there were no deaths due to lack of oxygen in Tamil Nadu during the second wave. “What I said was that there were no Covid deaths due to oxygen shortage in TN during the DMK government. Even the deaths that I mentioned happened when AIADMK was in power.”
On Friday, Subramanian said deaths in Chengalpet happened in the wee hours on May
4. “Before this there were two more incidents including four deaths in Vellore on April 19 and two deaths at the RGGH on April 6,” he said. But when the crisis occurred, the Vellore and Chengalpet hospitals had 10KL oxygen each and the Chennai hospital had 20KL oxygen. There were also other patients in these hospitals. “Doctors have told us that the problem was not inadequate oxygen but other technical issues.”
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