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‘No death caused due to non-supply of oxygen’: Goa govt tells Assembly
State health minister Vishwajit Rane said that “at no point in time, the oxygen supplies at GMC ran out of stock”.
Goa health minister Vishwajit Rane told the legislative assembly that “no death has been reported to have [been] caused due to non-supply of oxygen.” Earlier in May, the minister had said that a shortage of oxygen was leading to deaths at the Goa Medical College and Hospital.
In a written reply to Leader of Opposition Digambar Kamat, who sought the know the “details of the total number of deaths of Covid patients who died in Goa Medical College Hospital due to shortage of oxygen supply,” Rane said that “at no point in time, the oxygen supplies at GMC ran out of stock and thus, no death has been reported to have caused due to non-supply of oxygen.”
The reply is contrary to statements that the Goa government has made before the Bombay High Court at Goa before which it has admitted that “some deaths may have taken place due to “fall of pressure in the supply lines of oxygen to the patients.”
“There were logistical issues involved in manoeuvring the tractor which carries the trolleys of oxygen and in connecting the cylinders to the manifold. During this process, there was some interruption, which resulted in a fall of pressure in the supply lines of oxygen to the patients. It is basically on account of these factors some casualties may have taken place,” the state government told the court back in May.
It was Rane who first flagged the issue of dropping oxygen levels and called for a probe into the deaths during what he called were the “dark hours” at the Goa Medical College.
Rane first claimed that on the night of May 10, 26 people died due to oxygen shortage and on May 11 it was 21 deaths and called for a probe into the deaths.
The following three nights 15, 13 and 8 people were reported to have died before the state government finally shifted from using a system of oxygen being supplied through a cylinder manifold that needed to be changed using tractors to supply from a liquid medical oxygen tank.
The Bombay High Court at Goa, which took up the issue of oxygen shortage, however, wasn’t willing to buy the excuse.
“We have long passed the stage of determining whether patients are suffering from the lack of oxygen or not. The material placed before us establishes that patients are indeed suffering and even in some cases succumbing for want of the supply of oxygen, in the state of Goa,” the High Court, that is hearing the petitions filed by the South Goa Advocates Association among others, said.
The Goa Association of Resident Doctors first flagged the issue of oxygen running out as early as May 3 (a whole week before reports of deaths due to oxygen shortage started being reported in the media).
“The oxygen supply in various covid wards is not even close to sufficient. The central oxygen flow delivers very low flow oxygen at times and that is inadequate to keep NIVS and ventilators working effectively. Also, the oxygen cylinders being used for patients get over in the middle of the night and it takes at least 2-3 hours for replacement cylinders to come and sometimes more than that and for this time period, the patients are kept without oxygen with saturations dropping to less than 60%,” the resident doctors said in a letter dated May 2 to the Dean of the medical college.
