Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Wednesday attacked the Yogi Adityanath dispensation over the reported "mock drill" at a private hospital in Agra in which oxygen supply was allegedly cut off for five minutes, and asked if the Uttar Pradesh government will bring out the truth and punish those guilty.
The Agra administration on Tuesday ordered a probe after a video clip surfaced in which the owner of a private hospital there was purportedly heard saying that he conducted a "mock drill" in which oxygen supply was cut off for Covid patients for five minutes. In the video which went viral on social media, the owner of the hospital is also heard saying that bodies of some patients started turning blue after the oxygen supply was cut off.
Tagging media reports on the incident, Ms. Gandhi tweeted, "Amidst severe shortage of oxygen, the Uttar Pradesh government kept on saying 'there is no shortage'. People across the state struggled and lost their lives. The administration in Agra is also saying 'there was no shortage of oxygen'." Will the state government bring out the truth of the "Agra mock drill" and punish the guilty, the Congress general secretary in-charge Uttar Pradesh asked.
Agra District Magistrate Prabhu N. Singh had told reporters that action will be taken against the owner of the hospital under the Pandemic Act. In the April video, Dr. Arinjay Jain allegedly claims that there was acute oxygen shortage at the hospital during the second wave of coronavirus. "We talked with families of the patients but no one was ready to discharge their patients. So we decided to conduct a mock drill so that we could segregate the critically ill patients. After shutting off oxygen supply for five minutes, bodies of 22 patients started turning blue," Dr. Jain had said. He said that families of the remaining 74 COVID patients were asked to arrange for oxygen cylinders. However, the district magistrate has said there was no scarcity of oxygen at the hospital and that no patient died due to oxygen shortage at the hospital.
