Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain on Wednesday mentioned there have been many deaths as a result of oxygen scarcity in Delhi and different locations throughout the nation and it was “completely false” to say nobody died for need of the life-saving gasoline.
“If no deaths occurred due to oxygen shortage, why did hospitals move high court one after another every day? Hospitals had been saying that oxygen shortage led to deaths. The media, too, flagged this issue daily,” Jain informed reporters right here.
“Television channels and newspapers reported how hospitals ran out of oxygen. It is completely false ad wrong to say that no one died due to oxygen shortage,” he mentioned.
“There have been many deaths due to oxygen shortage in Delhi and many other places across the country. It was really sad and unfortunate,” Jain mentioned.
The minister mentioned the Centre didn’t ask for information associated to such deaths however the metropolis authorities had tried ascertaining the quantity by itself by organising the panel.
“The Delhi government had set up a committee to collect data on such deaths and give Rs 5 lakh compensation to the families of the deceased. But the Centre got the panel disbanded through the Lieutenant Governor,” he alleged.
“Else, we would have got the exact data as to how many people died due to oxygen shortage in Delhi I think the Centre disbanded the panel so that they could say no one died due to oxygen crisis,” the minister mentioned.
“The Centre is rubbing salts into the wounds of those who have lost their loved ones Tomorrow, they will say there have been no deaths due to COVID-19,” he added.
Delhi battled an acute scarcity of oxygen for round two weeks in April and May, as hospitals within the capital despatched out determined SOS calls to authorities to replenish their dwindling shares. Several personal healthcare amenities even requested the federal government to shift out their sufferers.
On April 23, round 20 critically-ill COVID-19 sufferers had died at Jaipur Golden Hospital in northwest Delhi as a result of oxygen scarcity.
Batra Hospital in Tughlakabad Institutional Area misplaced eight lives as a result of oxygen scarcity on May 1.
The central authorities on Tuesday knowledgeable the Rajya Sabha that no deaths as a result of lack of oxygen had been particularly reported by states and UTs throughout the second COVID-19 wave.
But there was an unprecedented surge in demand for medical oxygen throughout the second wave and it peaked at almost 9,000 MT in comparison with 3,095 MT within the first wave following which the Centre needed to step in to facilitate equitable distribution among the many states, it mentioned.
In an announcement issued on Tuesday, Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia mentioned there was a scarcity of medical oxygen throughout the peak of the COVID-19 second wave.
“The central government has been running a cover-up since the very start of the pandemic. It is because of their flawed policy and implementation that the country had to endure an oxygen crisis during the toughest phase of the pandemic,” he had mentioned.
The Delhi authorities “wanted to account for the reason behind deaths” throughout the pandemic, and had constituted a ‘Death Audit Committee’ to work in direction of that finish, Sisodia mentioned.
The central authorities, nonetheless, didn’t need their “fallacies to be unveiled so they did not let us go through with the committee as they knew what truth will come out in the open”, he alleged.
