As Covid Spikes, Russian Regions scramble for oxygen

01

Nov

PRAKSHI RAWAT

Russia believes steel production will step in with shipments as doctors in the country's regions suffer shortages. According to doctors, oxygen distributors, and government, several Russian areas are facing medical oxygen plant shortages as a result of the increase in Covid-19 cases. As the country will continue to set daily death records and has gone into complete lockdown to combat the disease, hospitals are scrambling to locate sources of liquid oxygen plants to help patients achieve their breathing.

"I wouldn't want to come across as crazy, but that's an incredibly tense situation". "We can't really expand up our supply," said Dmitriy Kuznetsov, one of the country's 3 primary medical oxygen plant suppliers.

"We're being as imaginative as we can in finding solutions because we realize our societal duties," he added.

Apart from a few isolated instances, Russia so far has averted widespread oxygen shortages like the ones that experienced in India last spring, when hospitals ran out of supply and patients all across the country died. Medics and suppliers, but on the other hand, warn that throughout the most recent wave of infections, they have been seeing record demand in some kind of a country where only 33% of adults are properly vaccinated.

"Since the beginning of the epidemic, there has been a huge increase in the demand for medical oxygen. "In certain cases, we've just seen a tenfold rise," said Anna Zhemchugova, a spokesperson for Linde, a German company that, together with Airliquide of France, is one of Russia's two major medical oxygen production plants. "Sometimes the oxygen arrives, and we feel as though we're sitting on the precipice.