Agra: The Uttar Pradesh government is set to carry out a probe after the owner of a prominent private medical facility in Agra was allegedly caught on audio bragging about the hospital shutting off the oxygen supply for five minutes in a “mock drill” on April 27. The owner purportedly claimed an acute shortage of oxygen at his facility during the raging second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We were told that even the Chief Minister cannot get oxygen, so start discharging patients. Modi Nagar is dry. We started counselling families. Some were willing to listen but the others said they would not leave. I said ok let’s do a mock drill. We will find out who will die and who will survive. So we did that at 7 am. A mock drill was done. No one knows. Then we identified 22 patients. We realised they would die. This was done for 5 minutes. They started turning blue,” owner of Paras Hospital, Arinjay Jain can be purportedly heard saying in the 1.5-minute audio clip.
The hospital also houses a COVID facility within the premises.
Agra District Magistrate Prabhu N Singh, via a statement to the media, claimed no death was there due to a dearth of oxygen on the day the alleged audio was recorded. According to him, the matter would be probed.
“Initially, there was some panic and shortage but we sorted all that out in 48 hours. In this hospital, there have been seven Covid deaths on the 26th and 27th of April. The hospital also has a lot of other ICU beds. There is no truth that 22 people died but we will carry out an inquiry,” Singh said via the statement.
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