Scramble For Oxygen In Russia Amid Spike In COVID Cases

New Delhi: Russia is facing widespread oxygen shortages similar to those seen in India last spring, where patients across the country died after hospitals ran out of supplies.

Several Russian regions are facing medical oxygen shortages because of surging numbers of COVID-19 cases, doctors, oxygen suppliers and officials told The Moscow Times.

The country has gone into partial lockdown to curb the virus. Hospitals are struggling to find supplies of liquid oxygen to boost the lung function of patients as the country continues to see consecutive daily death records. The latest tally on Friday reported 1,163 fatalities, bringing the total to 236,220, Europe’s highest.

“I don’t want to sound hysterical, but the situation is very tense. There isn’t really a way we can scale up our production,” Dmitriy Kuznetsov, the general manager of Cryongenmash, one of the three largest producers of medical oxygen in the country told The Moscow Times.

Kuznetsov said his company has scaled up “immensely” during the pandemic, and now produces 300 of the 2,000 metric tons of medical oxygen used each day in Russian hospitals.

“We are being as creative as we can in finding solutions because we understand the social responsibility we have,” he added.

According to medics and suppliers, during the latest wave of infections in a country where only 33% of adults are fully vaccinated, they are facing unprecedented demand.

“Since the beginning of the pandemic, the demand for medical oxygen has grown significantly. In some cases, we have seen a tenfold increase,” Anna Zhemchugova, a spokeswoman for Linde, a German firm that, together with France’s Airliquide, is one of the two major producers of medical oxygen in Russia was quoted as saying.

“The current situation is developing in a way that oxygen is running out,” the republic’s head Oleg Nikolaev told local media. Officials said that 99.5% of the region’s Covid-19 beds were occupied.

Speaking under condition of anonymity, two doctors working in the Infectious Diseases Hospital in Chuvashia’s capital Cheboksary warned that oxygen was running very low.

“We are getting to the point where we will have to choose who gets the oxygen,” one said.