‘Beg, borrow, steal or import’
Pankaj Solanki, a doctor and the director of a small hospital in New Delhi, rushed to an oxygen vendor earlier this week to secure enough cylinders to keep 10 COVID-19 patients on the ICU ward breathing.
His supplies would only last until Thursday night, and so he has sent a driver out to try to find more.
"It is mental agony. I can't bear it any more. What if something happens to the patients?" he told Reuters.
The last-minute scramble for oxygen at Dharamveer Solanki Hospital is playing out across the city and the country, which is facing the world's largest surge in COVID-19 cases.
Hospitals in India's capital, renowned for some of the best medical care in the country, are unable to guarantee basic services and thousands of lives hang in the balance - a stark warning of how India's healthcare system is buckling amid the pandemic.
Big private hospital chains have not been spared.
This week in New Delhi, which has been hit particularly hard by the coronavirus, seven Max Healthcare hospitals treating more than 1,400 Covid-19 patients were down to between 2 and 18 hours of oxygen left.
Staff at a major facility of the Apollo group had a harrowing night wondering if oxygen to 200 patients would run out. A tanker arrived at around 3 am, just in time, a source at the hospital said.
As panic breaks out at hospitals unable to admit some people with severe Covid-19 symptoms, police are being deployed to secure oxygen. In court, judges are challenging the central government to do more to address shortages.
In a late-night court hearing on Wednesday, Delhi justices called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government to "beg, borrow, steal or import" to meet the city's needs. Officials said they were arranging supplies, but the judges weren't convinced.
The state "cannot say 'we can provide only this much and no more', so if people die, let them die; that cannot be an answer by a responsible sovereign state," said Justice Vipin Sanghi.
The Supreme Court also intervened, saying Modi's administration should draw up a plan to address shortages of oxygen and critical supplies.
"The situation is alarming," the court said.
Modi and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal have been criticised for failing to plan for the upsurge in cases.
On April 13, when Delhi recorded 13,000 new cases, Kejriwal told a news channel there was "no shortage of oxygen". Five days later, he tweeted,
"OXYGEN HAS BECOME AN EMERGENCY".
"It is poor forecasting. Maybe they are not able to understand the gravity of the situation," said Anant Bhan, an independent researcher of global health and bioethics.
Some hospitals in Delhi have run out of oxygen altogether, putting lives at risk, the city's deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia said in a televised address. "After some time, saving lives would be difficult," he warned.
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