Over 100 oxygen concentrators have been set up at Communicable Diseases Hospital in Chennai.
The Greater Chennai Corporation has set up hundreds of beds with oxygen concentrators at city hospitals to save lives of Covid patients requiring O2 support amid shortage of medical oxygen due to the surge.
At the 100-year-old Communicable Diseases Hospital at Chennai's Tondiarpet where over a hundred machines have been installed, a concentrator gave new lease of life to 50-year-old Chinnamma.
"Doctors here are like God. They were able to save me with this machine. Without this God only knows what would happen to poor people like me".
Kumari, another patient who suffered breathlessness too is on the path of recovery. She added, "Now I feel much better. The doctor has taken me out of concentrator support and I am on observation".
The corporation has also given 250 concentrators to the Government Stanley Medical College Hospital. Doctors say this would help oxygen provide scarce liquid oxygen to critical patients.
"This will be useful in the case of patients requiring 5 to 10 litres of oxygen. We can conserve liquid oxygen being supplied to the hospital. The machine doesn't require any raw material and its medically fine for mild and moderate patients requiring oxygen," Dr P Shanmugasundaram, Professor, Dept of Anasthesiology said.
Several hospitals have reported an oxygen shortage in Tamil Nadu despite the hike in the allotment to 519 MT. Authorities in the civic body say they are tapping alternate resources to save lives. The Chennai Corporation has already deployed 900 such machines. It is procuring 2,100 more oxygen concentrators.
"We plan to have 5,000 standalone beds with oxygen concentrators. We are also giving these to all medical college hospitals where patients now waiting outside hospitals in ambulances could get relief. We would continue to ramp up," Greater Chennai Commissioner Gagandeep Singh Bedi told NDTV.
Nearly two weeks into the lockdown the daily tally of Tamil Nadu has crossed 34,000 with Chennai accounting for around 6,500 cases daily. With no major steel industries in the state, Tamil Nadu is also procuring oxygen from Odisha, besides tapping local resources.