Need to ramp up vaccination process Life giving oxygen

    19-May-2021
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Ramp up the vaccination process. This is the need of the hour. After more than a week, Manipur witnessed the number of positive cases in a single day well below the 400 mark with 330 on May 17 but the death count continues to be well above ten, with 14 deaths reported on the same day that the positive cases came down to 330. It is not for nothing why health professionals, including Director of Regional Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) Professor A Santa and Director of JNIMS Professor Th Bhimo in virtual messages urged all those eligible for the vaccine shots to get inoculated as people who have received the vaccine shots are known not to suffer serious attacks, in case they get infected even after their vaccination. Appealing the people to get vaccinated is one thing and ramping up the vaccination process is another thing and this is where the Government will need to step in and see how things can be ramped up. And it is the serious cases which need medical oxygen and it should tell a very significant story that a leading private medical hospital Raj Medicity had to suspend admission of Covid and non-Covid patients as it was running short of medical oxygen some time back. The shortage seems to have been addressed, for the said hospital has now resumed fresh admission of patients, but already this should tell a story of how some hospitals are gasping for breath under the onslaught of the virus which is seemingly infecting at will. Vaccination now seems to be the only way to keep the death count in check, as data and comparative studies conducted by some media organisations has shown that States with higher vaccination rate have shown lesser number of deaths than States where the vaccination process is slow.
And as suspected, the tally of 330 on May 17 has turned out to be a blip on the screen for Manipur has returned to the trend of reporting over 500 plus positive cases with May 18 recording 624 new infection in a single day. The death toll too equalled the earlier record of 20 deaths in a single day. The figures are all clear, but the important question is, of the 20 whose deaths were reported on May 18, how many died for want of medical oxygen ? The Health Department has not been forthcoming with such an information. On the other hand the daily news bulletin issued by the COVID-19 Control Room makes it a point to mention how many oxygen cylinders have been made available to the different hospitals, but it would help that much more if information on the daily requirements of medical oxygen is also issued. Oxygen crisis, this could be one reason why the number of deaths has been crossing the ten figure mark in the last couple of days. Augment the oxygen supply, enhance the oxygen production capacity of the different plants here in the State for oxygen shortage could be the prime reason for the galloping increase in the number of fatalities.