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DRDO’s 900-bed Covid facility to be inaugurated in Ahmedabad today
The Dhanvantri Covid Hospital will have a capacity of 900 beds including 150 intensive care unit (ICU) beds, said an official. Union home minister Amit Shah and chief minister Vijay Rupani will inaugurate the hospital
A new hospital set up by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) in Ahmedabad to deal with the rising number of coronavirus infections will be inaugurated this evening, officials familiar with the development said on Friday.
It will begin operations on Saturday. The hospital has been readied in less than 10 days.
The Dhanvantri Covid Hospital will have a capacity of 900 beds including 150 intensive care unit (ICU) beds, said an official. The remaining 750 beds also have provision for oxygen, he added. The DRDO has set up the facility in collaboration with the Gujarat government.
Union home minister Amit Shah and chief minister Vijay Rupani will inaugurate the hospital.
The DRDO is among the defence ministry organisations at the forefront of fighting the second wave of Covid-19. It has so far or is in the process of setting up state-of-the-art Covid hospitals in six cities to treat over 3,100 critical patients, as reported by HT on Friday.
The DRDO has set up a 500-bed hospital in Delhi and converted an ESIC hospital into a 500-bed Covid facility in Patna. In addition, hospitals with 450 beds in Lucknow and 750 beds in Varanasi are expected to be functional soon. A sixth Covid hospital is being readied in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur.
The DRDO has also stepped in to address the oxygen crisis precipitated by the second wave of the disease. It has transferred oxygen generation technology to the industry, which has now started providing oxygen plants to state governments and hospitals.
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The Uttar Pradesh government has ordered five such plants from Coimbatore-based Trident Pneumatics.
The technology transferred to the industry is based on the onboard oxygen generation technology developed for Tejas light combat aircraft. The oxygen generation plants can produce 1,000 litres of oxygen per minute.
Technology developed by the DRDO for a supplemental oxygen delivery system for soldiers posted in high-altitude areas has also been transferred to the industry, and it will soon be available in the market for use by Covid patients.
