India's steel mills rescue a choking country from impending disaster
The second most populous country in the world, India, was covered by a "coronavirus storm" - perhaps the most serious shock in the entire modern history of the Indian state. An acute shortage of medical oxygen to treat critically ill coronavirus patients has prompted Indian public and private sector steel mills to ramp up production.
On Sunday, metallurgists sent 3,132 tons of medical oxygen to hospitals, while the previous day the volumes were 2,894 metric tons. Steelmakers are working to increase production by an additional 1500-1700 tons per day.
Indian steel mills have expanded the production and supply of medical oxygen by reducing the production of nitrogen and argon gases. In addition, hospitals, which were supposed to maintain a 3.5-day supply of liquid oxygen, have reduced it to half a day to meet emergency medical needs due to a sharp increase in the number of critically ill coronavirus patients requiring hospitalization. </P >
Anti-records for the number of people infected with coronavirus in India are beating almost daily. On Monday, the authorities announced 352,991 cases of infection over the past day, 2,812 people have died. In total, during the pandemic in India, the coronavirus was diagnosed in more than 17.3 million people, the official number of victims approached 200 thousand. According to virologists, the coronavirus storm announced by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will rage in the country for at least three more weeks, while the real number of cases and deaths may be higher than official statistics due to the scale of the disaster.