At least 24 patients—most of them suffering from corona virus—died overnight due to shortage of oxygen in a government hospital in Chamarajanagar district in South Karnataka.
According to reports 23 of the victims were COVID-19 patients. There were in all 144 patients in this hospital then, most of them suffering from corona.
The hospital ran short of oxygen late on Sunday (May 2) night and this situation continued till 2:00 AM on Monday.
Reports also said that there is no oxygen refilling facility in the district and the hospitals here have to rely on Mysore, some 60 km away for it. But on Sunday due to some logistic reasons, the supply was disrupted.
Incidentally, Chamarajanagar was among the less affected districts when the pandemic swept the country for the first-time last year. However, the second wave this year reported a large number of cases, and officially 167 people have lost their lives till Sunday. Yet the number of fatalities and cases is much below than the state capital of Bengaluru, which has at present 2.5 lakh active cases of COVID-19.
Meanwhile, five patients reportedly died of oxygen shortage in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh and four more perished due to the same reason in Madhya Pradesh. Though officials in both these places deny these reports.
Media reports suggest that the fatalities in the BJP-ruled states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh due to corona virus and oxygen shortage are many times more than what is being officially accepted. In the last 24 hours, India officially reported 3.68 lakh corona cases; besides 3,417 people perished. Thus, it is showing slight decline in number of deaths and reported cases. But independent sources are contesting these figures on the basis of body count in crematoriums and graveyards.
