Questions rarely heard before are ringing out in the courtrooms.

“Why is the Centre not waking up to the gravity of the situation? We are shocked and dismayed hospitals are running out of oxygen but steel plants are running,” Delhi High Court said without mincing words on Wednesday.

Declarations never seen before are sprouting on the gates of private hospitals, leaving little to the imagination who is responsible.

“After repeated request to the UP CM/Central Govt, we are not able to get enough oxygen supply. Hence we are requesting the family members of those patients who are on oxygen support, please take their patients to higher centre for further management. We are extremely sorry for the inconvenience,” said a notice at Mayo Medical Centre in an affluent locality in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh.

At Delhi High Court, a bench of Justices Vipin Sanghi and Rekha Palli convened on a holiday to issue a reminder that the responsibility to ensure oxygen supply lies squarely on the central government’s shoulders.

The court made it clear that it was not speaking for the capital but for the entire country. “Our concern is not just for Delhi, we want to know what the central government is doing with regard to oxygen supply across India,” the bench said.

It pulled up the Centre for not diverting sufficient oxygen supply from industry to hospitals although people were dying. “You are not exploring all avenues to augment oxygen supply. Beg, borrow or steal,” the court said. “Do you want to see thousands of people dying in the country? …It seems human life is not important for the state.”

The irony of patients gasping for breath in several parts of the country despite India producing surplus oxygen has come to represent the Centre’s perceived mismanagement of the Covid crisis.

The following charges levelled by the Opposition suggest proactive leadership could have alleviated the depth of the Covid crisis although its enormity is something no government has had to contend with in recent memory:

Mayo Hospital in Lucknow announces it is unable to get oxygen supply after requests to the CM and the Centre. Naeem Ansari

Oxygen gap

Figures cited by the Congress indicate there is a problem in supply chain management and logistics.

“The government has said India’s oxygen production capacity is 7,127 tonnes per day. The maximum that Covid patients will need despite the enormity of the crisis is 5,500 tonnes per day.

The problem clearly is not of availability but we are not able to transport oxygen to the hospitals. The problem is of planning and execution because the key functionaries of the government were so engrossed in elections,” Congress general secretary Ajay Maken said.

Maken said cryogenic tankers, which can store materials at very low temperatures, were needed to ferry oxygen and that hospitals did not have adequate storage capacity.

“It took 15 months for the government to change the rules and allow cryogenic tankers licensed to carry nitrogen to also carry oxygen, and a week later they issued guidelines for unrestricted movement of tankers. The railways have been roped in now for the transportation of oxygen,” the Congress leader said.

Delhi High Court also focused on logistics. The bench said the Centre shall consider ways and means for transporting oxygen to hospitals, either by creating dedicated corridors or airlifting it from the place of production to the place of usage.

The court was conducting an urgent hearing on a plea filed by Balaji Medical and Research Centre, which owns and runs various hospitals in the name of Max, stating that if supply of oxygen is not replenished on an immediate basis, the lives of the patients who are critical and on oxygen support will be endangered.

Oxygen exports

Maken pointed to the increase in the quantity of oxygen exported amid the pandemic.

“Instead of planning for logistics to provide oxygen to hospitals all over the country, we doubled the export in 2020-21 in comparison with 2019-20. This, despite the knowledge that oxygen is crucial in treating critical patients,” he said.

“What is worse, the government took eight months to invite bids for onsite oxygen generation plants as taking oxygen to hospitals in remote corners of the country is difficult and takes time.

“Despite realising that oxygen was going to be precious in the fight against the virus at the very start of last year, it was only on October 21, 2020, that the Central Medical Services Society, an autonomous institution under the Union health ministry, floated a tender online calling for bidders to establish pressure swing adsorption oxygen plants in 150 (12 plants were added later, taking the figure to 162) district hospitals across the country — the total outlay of which was just Rs 201.58 crore. So far, only 32 out of 162 plants are ready. Even the storage capacity of hospitals wasn’t enhanced. This is how we wasted 15 months,” Maken said.

Vaccine

The Centre’s move to pass the buck to the states abruptly reeks of opportunism. The same Centre did not allow concessions to the chief minister’s funds while extending it to the opaque PM Cares Fund, which is meant to help fund the fight against Covid.

Yet, the Centre is now asking the states to buy vaccines and inoculate the people. “Where will the cash-strapped states bring money from? Modi created this scary situation and now he wants to shift responsibility to the states,” Maken said.

The Congress also took strong exception to the Serum Institute of India fixing the price of vaccines at Rs 400 per dose for states and Rs 600 for private hospitals. Serum’s price for the Centre has been Rs 150 per dose for the initial supplies.

Rahul Gandhi took a dig at the Prime Minister, saying: “Aapda desh ki, awsar Modi mitron ka, anyay kendra sarkar ka (Calamity is nation’s; Opportunity is for friends of Modi; injustice is by the central government).”

In another tweet, the Congress leader said: “The Centre’s vaccine strategy no different from demonetisation. Common people will stand in queue, will suffer loss of wealth and health and some crony capitalists will gain.”

Maken asked: “Would the Prime Minister answer that India being the world’s biggest vaccine producer, why is it that only 1.3 per cent of Indians have so far been fully vaccinated? Why is it that despite being one of the largest medicine manufacturers, we are facing acute shortage of life-saving medicines? Why is it that at many places including Delhi, Covid tests are taking three to seven days? Why did we fail to anticipate the second wave despite it being a global phenomena?”

Anti-viral drug

Wondering why 6.5 crore doses and 11 lakh injections of the anti-viral drug remdesivir were allowed to be exported apart from two crore testing kits, Maken said: “Remdesivir export was stopped just 10 days back. Stockists and traders have been hoarding large quantities and selling them at exorbitant prices in the black market. Several BJP leaders have been caught with huge stocks of remdesivir. We demand the Centre use the CBI, NIA and the ED against those leaders and traders who are encouraging this black market,” Maken said.

Iterating its demand for Rs 6,000 to be deposited every month in the bank accounts of the poor and daily-wage earners to check migration, Maken called for proper arrangements for food and reduction in the rates charged for Covid testing and CT scans. “The Rajasthan government reduced the RT-PCR test rates to Rs 350 and also capped the CT scan rate at Rs 1,700. Why are other states charging so high?” the Congress leader asked.