Adequate oxygen available for hospitalised COVID-19 patients – Dr Anthony
Oxygen continues to be readily available at all public hospitals treating COVID-19 patients. On Tuesday, Minister of Health Dr Frank Anthony said that the ministry has been working with the oxygen company to ensure there is adequate supplies of oxygen.
“We have had several meetings between ourselves and the company and we have taken some additional measures of increasing the oxygen capacity at the Ocean View facility,” Dr Anthony said, “so previously where we were utilising a thousand cylinder of oxygen, we had thousands of them, we have now put in a bulk tank, that was specially designed and brought into the country to cater for such needs.”
The bulk tank is replenished every 24 hours the Minister said as he said that there are back up plans for the supply of oxygen, “We don’t anticipate that we will be short,” Dr Anthony said.
During his daily update compiled by the Department of Information, the Minister encouraged persons to get vaccinated as he called on persons to without their second dose to get it. There are a number of persons who are still to get their AstraZeneca 2nd dose, the Minister explained, “from our records we are seeing a number of persons who got their first dose, and they haven’t come back for their 2nd dose and this is in all the regions.”
To date, 337,030 persons or 65.7% of the adult population got their first doses while 175,037 persons or 34.1% of the adult population are now fully vaccinated. Among the vaccines available are AstraZeneca, Sinopharm, Sputnik first doses. The Minister said the government is trying to acquire Sputnik 2nd doses as a global shortage has threatened its availability.
