Gandhinagar: Claiming that the State was all prepared for a third possible Covid-19 wave, Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani on Monday announced that his government would set up 300 pressure swing absorption (PSA) oxygen plants in the State.
The Chief Minister, simultaneously, stated that not a single Covid-19 patient had died in Gujarat because of oxygen shortage. He added that over 8 lakh people had recovered from the infection, which was over 98 per cent of the caseload.
Rupani informed that though the normal requirement for medical oxygen in the State had been 100 metric tonnes a day, it increased astronomically to 1,200 metric tonnes during the second wave.
The Chief Minister was speaking after inaugurating a 150-litre capacity PSA oxygen plant set up at a cost of Rs 22 lakh in Gadhada in Botad district. Rupani went on to say that Gujarat was the only state in the country which had controlled the second wave effectively “without imposing a total lockdown”.
An official press release from the Chief Minister’s Officer stated, “We plan to produce 1,800 MT oxygen to meet the demand during a possible third wave. Our target is to set up 300 PSA plants to meet this demand, of which 175 have already been set up. Gujarat is the only state that controlled the second wave successfully without imposing total lockdown, while it is still raging in several states which imposed lockdowns.”
