49 oxygen plants to come up in Andhra Pradesh

Vijayawada: The Andhra Pradesh government has decided to set up pressure swing absorption-based oxygen generation plants in 49 district/area hospitals at a cost of Rs 309 crore.

Principal Secretary (Health) Anil Kumar Singhal told media persons here on Friday that based on the number of beds available in each hospital, they would set up such plants and sounded confident that the plants would become operational within three months.

Singhal expressed confidence that once the plants were set up there would not be any issues with respect to transport and storage of oxygen. He said administrative sanction was given for setting up such plants on a permanent basis and out of the allotted Rs 309 crore, the government would spend Rs 180 crore on plants, Rs 25 crore for civil works, and Rs 50 crore for laying 10,000 additional oxygen pipelines. He also informed that out of 50 cryogenic tankers planned to be procured, orders were placed for purchase of 25 tankers. It would cost Rs 45 crore for purchase of the tankers.

On the Covid-19 vaccination, the senior official stated that so far, AP received 73,49,960 doses. A total of 53,58,712 persons were given the first dose, while 17,96,000 were given the second dose, taking the total number of doses given so far to 71,55,000.

The official informed that the state government had sanctioned Rs 45 crore for purchase of 9,91,000 doses of Covishield and 3,43,000 doses of Covaxin and payments were already made for their procurement. Serum Institute of India conveyed that it would supply 3.5 lakh doses more than the allotted doses by the third week of May. With regard to Covaxin, he said that out of allotted 3,43,000 doses, 1,43,000 doses were received while two lakh more doses were yet to be received.

Singhal said the government would give weightage to health workers working on temporary basis on Covid duty for recruitments in the health department, which they had been asking for. A memo was issued to provide 15% weightage to the health workers who worked on Covid duty during the first wave of the pandemic. He assured to give an order shortly with details on modalities to give weightage to the health workers in recruitments.