Why is India facing a deadly crunch of oxygen amid COVID surge?

 

Why is medical oxygen vital?

Oxygen therapy is crucial for severe COVID-19 patients with hypoxaemia – when oxygen levels in the blood are too low.

“Some clinical studies show that up to a quarter of hospitalised (COVID-19) patients require oxygen therapy and upwards to two-thirds of those in intensive care units,” community health specialist Rajib Dasgupta told the AFP news agency.

“This is why it is imperative to fix oxygen-supply systems in hospital settings as this is a disease that affects lungs primarily.”

Experts have long raised the alarm about shortages of medical oxygen in India and other poor countries to treat pneumonia, the world’s biggest preventable infectious killer of children under five years of age.

But the government has for years failed to invest enough money into such infrastructure, experts say.

Does India produce enough oxygen?

The short answer: yes.

Experts say the vast nation of 1.3 billion people is producing enough oxygen – a little over 7,000 tonnes a day. Most is for industrial use but can be diverted for medical purposes.

The bottlenecks are in transport and storage.

Liquid oxygen at very low temperatures has to be transported in cryogenic tankers to distributors, which then convert it into gas for filling cylinders.

But India is short of cryogenic tankers. And such special tankers, when filled, have to be transported by road and not by air for safety reasons.

Most oxygen producers are in India’s east, while the soaring demand has been in cities including financial hub Mumbai in the west and the capital New Delhi in the north.

“The supply chain has to be tweaked to move medical oxygen from certain regions which have excess supply to regions which need more supply,” the head of one of India’s biggest medical oxygen suppliers Inox Air Products, Siddharth Jain, told AFP.

Meanwhile, many hospitals do not have on-site oxygen plants, often because of poor infrastructure, a lack of expertise and high costs.

Late last year, India issued tenders for on-site oxygen plants for hospitals. But the plans were never acted on, local media report.

What is being done?

The government is importing mobile oxygen generation plants and tankers, building more than 500 new plants and buying portable oxygen concentrators.

Industries have been ordered by the government not to use liquid oxygen.

Oxygen supplies are being brought to hard-hit regions using special train services.

The military has also been mobilised to transport tankers and other supplies domestically and from international sources.

Emergency medical supplies – including liquid oxygen, cryogenic tankers, concentrators and ventilators – are being flown in from other countries in a huge aid effort.

What is happening on the ground?

Oxygen shortages are still affecting badly hit regions despite the measures to boost supply, transport and storage.

Reports have emerged of hospitals asking patients to arrange for their own cylinders and of people dying even after being admitted due to low oxygen supplies.

Social media platforms have been filled with posts by desperate families hunting for cylinders and refills.

Meanwhile, there is a growing black market for cylinders and concentrators sold far above their usual retail prices.

The shortages have sparked outrage and frustration in New Delhi.

“The government did not plan in time,” sales executive Prabhat Kumar told AFP.

“Had it been prepared, we would not have to suffer like this for beds and oxygen.”

Rare chunks of Earth’s mantle found exposed in Maryland

 

Standing among patches of muddy snow on the outskirts of Baltimore, Maryland, I bent down to pick up a piece of the planet that should have been hidden miles below my feet.

On that chilly February day, I was out with a pair of geologists to see an exposed section of Earth's mantle. While this layer of rock is usually found between the planet's crust and core, a segment peeks out of the scrubby Maryland forest, offering scientists a rare chance to study Earth's innards up close.

Even more intriguing, the rock's unusual chemical makeup suggests that this piece of mantle, along with chunks of lower crust scattered around Baltimore, was once part of the seafloor of a now-vanished ocean.

Over the roughly 490 million years since their formation, these hunks of Earth were smashed by shifting tectonic plates and broiled by searing hot fluids rushing through cracks, altering both their composition and sheen. Mantle rock is generally full of sparkly green crystals of the mineral olivine, but the rock in my hand was surprisingly unremarkable to look at: mottled yellow-brown stone occasionally flecked with black.

“Those rocks have had a tough life,” says George Guice, a mineralogist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

Because of this geologic clobbering, scientists have struggled for more than a century to determine the precise origins of this series of rocks. Now, Guice and his colleagues have applied a fresh eye and state-of-the-art chemical analyses to the set of rocky exposures in Baltimore. Their work shows that the seemingly bland series of stones once lurked underneath the ancient Iapetus Ocean. 

More than half a billion years ago, this ocean spanned some 3,000 to 5,000 miles, cutting through what is now the United States’ eastern seaboard. Much of the land where the Appalachian mountains now stand was on one side of the ocean, and parts of the modern East Coast were on the other.

Private Schools in Florida won’t allow teachers and staff to get COVID-19 vaccine

 

Miami school sends letter to parents

A private school in Miami is warning its staff against getting a COVID-19 vaccine.

Centner Academy said its school policy, to the extent possible, not to employ anyone who has gotten a coronavirus vaccine until further information is known.

“Here we have one of the most powerful tools in our arsenal to protect ourselves and prevent this problem and they are discouraging the use of it. It’s tragic,” said Dr. Aileen Marty, a FIU infectious disease expert.

A letter was sent to parents of students at Centner Academy, saying the school discourages teachers and staff from getting the COVID-19 vaccines or to wait until the end of the school year to get vaccinated.

The letter said legal action would be taken if they lied about it.

“This is a private school. It’s not a public school. So, generally, a private employer in Florida can fire someone for any reason or no reason at all,” said Carter Sox, an employment lawyer.

Sox said firing someone for getting the vaccine is legal in this case. But there appears to be some recourse if fired personnel want to fight it.

“There is a potential for the teachers to say that this rule would discriminate against them based on a disability,” Cox said. “So, they may say they have a serious medical condition that requires them to get the vaccine.”

According to the New York Times, which published an article on the Centner situation, faculty was told to fill out a confidential form answering whether they received the vaccine, which one and how many doses.

“It’s egregious towards anyone who wants to protect themselves from this virus, who would be employed by them,” Marty said.

In the letter, the school claims tens of thousands of women worldwide had adverse reproductive issues by just being near someone who was vaccinated, including irregular menstruation, bleeding and miscarriages.

“There is nothing infectious in the vaccine whatsoever and the type of immunity that they induce in no way affects anything to do with someone’s fertility,” Marty said.

The school also claimed it spoke with medical leaders about the vaccine, that it’s experimental and not enough is known about it.

Marty is confident in the use of the vaccine and questions who the medical experts are that the school is using.

“The author has a very primitive understanding of what a vaccine is and really no understanding of the scientific process,” Marty said.

The United Teachers of Dade union released a statement saying, “These schools not only teach misinformation and peddle propaganda, they punish teachers who try to protect themselves and their families.”

It goes on to stay, “We are horrified by the unsafe conditions and labor violations that colleagues at schools such as this one have to endure due to lack of union representation and contract rights.”