NASHIK: The district administration, on the the instructions of the state government, has prepared a blueprint to ramp up the availability of Liquid Medical Oxygen (LMO) across Nashik.
As per the plan prepared by the district administration, major thrust is to install LMO tanks both in city and rural areas that will provide more than 70% of the projected requirement of oxygen if the third wave of Covid infection strikes.
“A total of 14 LMO tanks storing 159.3 tonne of oxygen have been proposed in the district. Once the plan is finalized the tanks are expected to be installed by August,” incident commander Dattaprasad Nade, who is also the additional district collector, said.
The officer pointed out that the preliminary plan has been chalked out and the District Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) headed by collector Suraj Mandhare would soon review it.
The state government has stated that oxygen requirement could go up three times the demand during the peak of second wave. Considering there was demand for 135 tonne of oxygen during the second wave, the administration has planned to arrange for 404 tonne of oxygen with 282.8 tonne being stored in LMO tanks.
Civic chief Kailas Jadhav said the corporation along with some major private establishments has nine tanks with a capacity of 90 tonne and six more tanks — two by the NMC and rest by major private hospitals who have more than 50 oxygen beds, will thus contribute to 90 tonne of oxygen through the LMO only.
The oxygen tanks will have a refilling facility which will be used during the peak period only to ensure smooth flow of oxygen to all hospitals. Across the rural areas of Nashik eight such tanks have been proposed with a capacity of 70 tonne
