Don't Generalise To Say Delhi Sought 4X O2 Needed: Guleria

‘Oxygen Report Interim, Final One Next Week’

- Durgesh Nandan Jha

New Delhi: AIIMS director Dr Randeep Guleria, who heads the five-member oxygen audit committee appointed by the Supreme Court, said on Saturday that it would be wrong to generalise and say that Delhi exaggerated its oxygen demand by four times. “It may have been four times or less depending on the ground situation on a particular day. Therefore, it should not be generalised,” he told TOI.

Guleria said the report submitted to the apex court was an interim one. “It is not the final report. We have another meeting in two to three days. Based on the deliberations, a final report will be submitted by next week,” he said.

In the backdrop of the war of words between BJP functionaries and the AAP government in Delhi on the issue, Dr Guleria explained that oxygen requirement was a dynamic process and the requirement is bound to change from day to day and time to time, depending on how the pandemic behaves. The AIIMS director said the audit committee used a government-approved formula to calculate the need for oxygen in Delhi, considering the number of ICU and routine beds that are there at a given time and the demand that was being made.