Thread by @Bhuvanbagga

India's largest medical oxygen supplier, INOX's @JainSiddharth_, Tuesday shared a perspective on the country's #OxygenCrisis. Posting some rough quotes & points he made giving a good peek into the sector, Covid19 plans, coordination, and challenges ahead. This THREAD 1/n 🧵👇

https://twitter.com/Bhuvanbagga/status/1389856785641746432

First, in a way, he explained why the oxygen crisis faced by Delhi in the last few days was a logistical one. Some other states facing it had addressed it on their own. Procuring the supplies from respective O2 plants, after central allocation was a state's job, Jain said. 2/n

"You need time to react. Delhi cases only began in the past two weeks, give or take, but no body calculated – not the state, not the center – on how much oxygen would be required. And Delhi isn’t industrial...It imports, guess what, neighbouring states too have covid cases." 3/n

About Delhi's oxygen supplies, @JainSiddharth_ said on Tuesday that his firm (INOX) had been delivering its share on time, and he believed that others too had ramped up their logistics. Going forward it "should be much smoother" for the city. 4/n

"I think the amount of support that is coming in for Delhi in the past 2-3 days & what has been planned over the next week is significant. Don't see any shortage whatsoever in Delhi as we speak today, right now, or going forward...IF number of cases remain the same," he said. 6/n

Jain felt that a lockdown in Maharashtra and improvement signs in Gujarat should help India's overall oxygen supply logistics as both these states are big producers (of oxygen and) are also consuming a part of their supplies for now. 7/n

Before this Covid19 wave, India had about 1200 oxygen supply tankers which worked fine for 7.2k tonne in smaller radiuses. Peak O2 demand in 1st wave, @JainSiddharth_ said, was less than 3k tonne. Order to convert Nitrogen/Argon tankers added 1200 to logistics fleet if needed 8/n

India producing abt 9.2k tonne, more than 7.5k tonne consumption, but main issue around logistics of oxygen movement from Eastern (around steel plants) to peak demand areas of north. Use of Air Force + Trains helping cut turnaround time. North only produces 10% of o2 in India.9/n

-Industrial & medical O2 same at 99.5% purity. Labs needed to check for impurities in batches for medical.
-Production jump from 7.5k to 9.2k tonne "nothing short of miracle"
- O2 plants & producers working at 120% capacity.
-Many of @JainSiddharth_'s staff/drivers Covid+
10/n

After last peak in Sept & October, 2020, "we really thought that it cant get any worse than this and here comes the second wave and its really a Tsunami."

Active cases jumping from 150k in March to 3.3 million in April "unfathomable...like a nuclear reaction." 11/n

Govt's empowered group (he's a member) met in April 2020 & made some oxygen demand estimates, close to numbers India is seeing now. "They had made estimates & people like me who are part of the industry never believed..." going by data & experiences from other countries. 12/n

Even as macro picture of oxygen demand was noted, "I don't think we went into microplanning of state wise demand. It was done at a macro-level as the country wide demand. If Jhansi in UP, what is going to be requirement there, or Gwalior, certainly that wasn’t done." 13/n

"India being such a large country is seeing spikes in different states at different times which is taking national number higher...and such waves will continue till we break the chain and go for a lockdown. If we don’t, we can't stop unless we get 100 percent vaccinated." 14/14