Amid higher demand for medical oxygen, the Centre on Tuesday assured an increase of at least 25% in supply from current levels by Saturday while saying that it had already made efforts to raise availability by four times in the last six weeks. In a statement, the government said it had mobilised all resources to ramp up supply to ensure oxygen availability across hospitals. “As a result, the medical oxygen supply has also been increased by nearly four times from 1,273 MT/day in the last week of Feb, 2021 to 4,739 MT/day on 17th April, 2021,” the statement read. The government said that they have exempted all inter-state movement of oxygen tankers from registration of permits to ensure smooth movement and that a rolling tender of 50,000 MT of oxygen had been floated for importing medical oxygen. “DPIIT Secretary, Guruprasad Mohapatra and Additional Secretary, Sumita Dawra, who are overseeing the oxygen supply, have been working despite contracting the virus,” the statement read.

Source: Hindustan Times April 20, 2021 18:30 UTC