Top PSU Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) is in the process to set up medical units of about 2,500 beds with gaseous oxygen (GOX) for Covid treatment.
These medical units will be in addition to the facilities already available at SAIL's five integrated steel plants at Bhilai (Chattisgarh), Bokaro (Jharkhand), Rourkela (Odisha), Durgapur and Burnpur (West Bengal).
These medical units for Covid treatment are being planned outside the existing hospital facilities and shall have oxygen support through a dedicated gas line drawn directly from the steel plants instead of extracting gaseous oxygen from liquid medical oxygen as is being done in the own hospitals of SAIL currently.
In response to Centre’s appeal , SAIL is learnt to be planning to use gaseous oxygen directly as an additional source of oxygen as the demand for liquid medical oxygen is high currently, said SAIL the in a statement today.
As per the SAIL’s plan these 2,500 bed facility will be developed in phased manner in collaboration with the respective state governments. In the first phase, the company will set up about 700 beds which will be scaled up to 2,500 beds across all the five locations.
As per available official data available, there are around 3,000 beds in the five SAIL hospitals and about 45 per cent of beds have been earmarked for Covid patients.