Mumbai: Amid rising mismatch between demand and supply, the Maharashtra Government has issued global tenders for the procurement of 40,000 oxygen concentrators, 132 pressure swing adsorption (PSA) plants, 25,000 MT of liquid oxygen, 10 lakh Remdesivir and oxygen storage tankers. This was announced by the Public Health Minister Rajesh Tope on Tuesday.
He said the government has already set up an empowered committee to take decisions on early procurement. Singapore, Bangladesh and Egypt have evinced interest to supply Remdesivir vials to the state.
The Free Press Journal broke the story about the government’s Rs 745 crore plan for the procurement of oxygen, Remdesivir. The government’s move comes at a time when it has projected that the active case will cross 10.32 lakh by May 2.
State government’s move came days after the Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray at the video conference told the Prime Minister Narendra Modi that the Centre needs to increase the oxygen supply especially from the neighbouring states especially when there are more than 60,000 patients in the state are on oxygen support while there are 76,300 oxygen beds and over 25,000 additional oxygen beds were being arranged.
The Centre has allocated 1,784 MT to the state. However, the state government has brought to the Centre’s notice that its own production capacity is 1,250 MT while it was getting only 345 MT.
The state government has made a fresh appeal for the allocation of 500 MT oxygen.
CM has pressed for 500 MT of oxygen supply to meet the increasing requirement from the COVID 19 patients.
The state government has urged the Centre to provide 70,000 Remdesivir vials per day from the present level 40,000 vials. Centre has allocated 4,35,000 Remdesivir vials for April 21 to 30 but the state has said they were inadequate.
