At the peak of the second wave India was reporting over four lakh new COVID-19 cases per day (File)
Data from 12 states indicates there were no deaths due to a lack of medical oxygen in the second Covid wave, Health Ministry sources said on Wednesday afternoon, a week after the centre asked states and UTs to collect and submit information on this topic.
Thirteen states have submitted this data so far, sources said, adding that only Punjab had marked deaths - four of them - as "suspicious".
The 12 that have claimed zero deaths due to a lack of medical oxygen - during the weeks that individuals and hospitals mounted desperate appeals on social media and in courtrooms - are Odisha, Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Nagaland, Assam, Sikkim, Tripura, Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh, as well as the UTs of Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir.
Last week the government asked all states and UTs to provide data that, it said, would be collated and presented before Parliament's monsoon session - which has faced repeated adjournments over several issues, including the "no deaths due to lack of oxygen" claim, ends on August 13.
A massive row broke out last month after junior Health Minister Bharati Praveen Pawar told the Rajya Sabha "no deaths due to lack of oxygen were reported" during the second COVID-19 wave.
Over in the Lok Sabha, new Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya defended the government, pointing out that since health is a state subject, states and UTs had to provide this data.
Either way, the statement triggered howls of protest, as the opposition pointed to social media appeals and cases filed by hospitals frantically looking for help for patients on oxygen support.
"It is completely false to say no one died due to the oxygen crisis. Why were hospitals making desperate appeals everyday at the High Court?" Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain lashed out.
In Goa over 80 people died at a state-run medical facility over five days in May.
In Andhra Pradesh's Tirupati, 11 Covid patients in the ICU of a hospital lost their lives after supply was disrupted. At a government hospital in Hyderabad, seven died after a two-hour cut in supply.
In Delhi, a doctor was among 12 who died at a private hospital after oxygen supplies ran out. At another hospital 25 deaths were reported.
Gaurav Gera, 23, whose parents died of Covid at a Delhi hospital, told NDTV: "We were pained to hear the government's statements... My father was fine. When we got a call about his death, doctor told us about oxygen shortage."
"This is a blind and unconcerned government. People have seen how many of their near and dear ones have died because of lack of oxygen," Congress leader KC Venugopal had said.
The surge in severe symptomatic cases during the second COVID-19 wave earlier this year - cases requiring hospitalisation and oxygen - put immense pressure on an already creaking health infrastructure, and hospitals ran short of critical medical supplies, including oxygen.
The shortfall was severe enough to force the government to import oxygen, rush to set up new oxygen production plants and turn to other countries for help in setting up emergency facilities.
Throughout the crisis the government insisted the shortfall was a transport problem and not a supply issue; the challenge, it claimed, was moving oxygen from where it was produced to needed.