New Delhi
The sub-group constituted by the Supreme Court to audit Oxygen consumption in hospitals in the national capital during the second wave of Covid-19 said that the Delhi government 'exaggerated' the consumption of oxygen and made a claim of 1,140 MT, four times higher than the formula for bed capacity requirement of 289 MT.
The five-member panel headed by AIIMS Director Randeep Guleria said the Delhi government had made the claims for allocation of 700 MT oxygen on April 30 of medical grade Oxygen using a 'wrong formula'.
The top court had on May 6 named a sub-group for carrying out the audit exercise for Delhi's health infrastructure and allocation of oxygen and said that it shall consist of Randeep Guleria of AIIMS, Sandeep Budhiraja of Max Healthcare and two IAS officers not below the rank of Joint Secretary -- one each from the Centre and the Delhi government.
The panel in its report pointed out that four model hospitals in Delhi --Singhal Hospital, Aruna Asaf Ali Hospital, ESIC Model Hospital and Liferay Hospital -- have claimed extremely high Oxygen consumption with very few beds and the claims appeared to be clearly "erroneous, leading to extremely skewed information and significantly higher Oxygen requirement for entire state of Delhi".
The panel, which submitted its interim report to the top court, said that during the meetings of the sub-group, it was repeatedly noted that there was a "gross discrepancy" in the data recorded from proformas.
