The COVID-19 pandemic has reduced the gap between the demand for and production of oxygen in Assam, which has the State government worried.
The COVID-19 and non-COVID patients have together been consuming an average of 25 metric tonnes of oxygen per day and the requirement is inching closer to the daily production of 37.86 MT in the State, Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said.
“We have 433 COVID-19 patients on oxygen support, 152 of them from Guwahati alone. From 5 MT in July, the oxygen consumption increased to 8.25 MT per day in August,” he said.
“Along with non-COVID patients on oxygen support, the daily requirement has now touched 25 MT. This leaves us with a little more than 12 MT, but if the requirement increases we might have to bring oxygen from West Bengal and Jharkhand,” Dr. Sarma said.
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The Minister said the increasing consumption of oxygen by patients should serve as a warning to people who continued to avoid wearing masks in public.
He also said 707 patients had received plasma so far. Plasma treatment in the State has had a success rate of 95% if administered in the early stages of infection, he claimed.
Till 11 p.m. on August 30, Assam recorded 1,05,774 COVID-19 positive cases, 83,927 of whom recovered and 296 died — most of them with co-morbidities.
On the brighter side, the recovery rate improved to 5.80% from 6.58% on August 29.
