Thiruvananthapuram: Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan has sent as SOS to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeking immediate supply of liquid oxygen as the state is witnessing a steep climb in the daily cases in the second wave of Covid.
Kerala recorded the highest ever daily number of nearly 42,000, fast approaching the 50,000-mark, which will put the state’s health infrastructure beyond the reach of patients.
Vijayan told Modi that right now there is no shortage of oxygen, but the way the infection is spreading in the state, things would soon go out of hand.
He has sought 1,000 metric tonnes of imported liquid oxygen to meet the emergency, out of which 500 tonnes are required immediately.
The state is also facing pressure on the availability of ICU beds. All the government hospitals together have a total of 2,857 ICU beds, out of which roughly about a thousand are occupied by Covid patients.
Similarly, the state would soon run out of ventilators as the hospitals are receiving a steady stream of new patients, most of them with requirement of oxygen.
In view of the worsening Covid situation, the chief minister announced that the banks re being approached to stop all recovery proceedings as well as revenue recovery proceedings by government agencies.
The authorities have announced lock-down like restrictions in districts such as Ernakulam, where the daily number of new infections has crossed 5,000. Some 50 panchayats in Ernakulam have been brought under lock-down.
The government has warned that at this rate, lock-down will have to be extended to the whole of the state
