SAIL to set up 2,500 beds with oxygen facilities to meet surging demand amid pandemicAiming to ramp up facilities to meetthe growing demand for beds owing to the spike in Corona virus cases in the country, Maharatna company Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) is planning to set up jumbo medical facilities of about 2,500 beds with the support of gaseous oxygen (GOX)for Covid treatment.This is in addition to the facilities currently available at SAIL's five integrated steel plants at Bhilai (Chhattisgarh), Bokaro (Jharkhand), Rourkela (Odisha), Durgapur and Burnpur (West Bengal).These jumbo facilities are being planned outside the existing hospital facilities, and shall have oxygen support through a dedicated gas line drawn directly from the steel plants instead of extracting gaseous oxygen from liquid medical oxygen, as is being done in SAIL's own hospitals.On Centre's suggestion, SAIL willuse Gaseous Oxygen directly as an additional source of oxygen as the demand for liquid medical oxygen is right now quite high.These 2,500beds will be developed in a phased manner in collaboration with the respective state governments.
In the first phase, the company will set up about 700 beds which will be scaled up to 2,500 beds across all the five locations.Currently, there are around 3,000 beds in the five SAIL hospitals and about 45 per centof beds have been earmarked for COVID patients.