25 more oxygen generators to reach India from Europe next week

The European Union has substantially delivered on its offer for assistance to India and has sent 12 oxygen plants, 1,700 ventilators, 1,500 oxygen concentrators.

Twenty-five more oxygen generators will reach India from Europe over the next week to ease the severe medical oxygen supply crisis in the country, particularly the national capital Delhi, people familiar with the development said.

EU loads cryogenic tankers on an IAF C-17 in Germany. Source (IAF Twitter)

The high-capacity generators, most of them made by French company Novair, produce medical oxygen from ambient air to feed a hospital’s oxygen system. The oxygen generators include 19 bought by three-four Indian firms including an IT major, which dipped into their corporate social responsibility funds to buy the high-capacity oxygen generators.

Officials coordinating foreign assistance and import of medical equipment from abroad said the oxygen generators - 17 will come from Novair’s manufacturing facility north of Paris and another 2 from its Italian plant - will be dispatched on 17 May. Each plant has the capacity to generate 24,000 litres of oxygen per hour.

Five more oxygen generators will be picked up from France by the Indian Air Force’s C-17 Globemaster III, the heavy-lift transport aircraft that can carry a payload of 77 tonnes, on 21 May. There is a plan by the army to fly in another five generators from Paris but the schedule hasn’t been finalised yet, an official said.

In addition, an official said, India had also managed to get a commitment for 420 metric tonnes of zeolite from another French firm Arkema. The company had initially agreed to ship 160 MT but later relented. Zeolite is used in oxygen concentrators to absorb nitrogen when the ambient air is forced under pressure through the concentrator’s molecular sieve.

Officials said these emergency supplies are in addition to supplies being received from European Union and its member states to help India cope with record-breaking infections that have stayed above the 300,000-mark for weeks.

Officials in New Delhi said India has received a substantial part of the offers from the EU, 17 EU member states, Norway and Iceland including items worth more than Euro 100 million, apart from the Euro 2.2 million emergency funding by the EU to WHO’s management of patients and strengthening testing capacities in India.

Around 250 more ventilators, 250 oxygen concentrators and 5,000 more vials of Remdesivir are in the pipeline. India has already received 12 oxygen plants, 1,700 ventilators, 1,500 oxygen concentrators, 1,300 cylinders, 70,000 vials of Remdesivir, 20,000 vials of monoclonal antibodies and more than 210 tonnes of liquid medical oxygen. France, Germany, Ireland, The Netherlands, Italy and Spain were the major contributors.