The civic body’s first oxygen plant at one of the selected 12 civic hospitals will come up in two months, most likely at Govandi Shatabdi or Kurla Bhabha. Even with the test positivity ratio of the city going down below 10 for the first time since the second wave spread, the number of cases are steady at about 4,000 cases this week. The need for oxygen is still high, and thus the civic body is struggling to bring in liquid oxygen every day to the hospitals in need. But setting up these plants is a struggle for the civic body as there are too many points to be considered from high power consumption to the cost of maintaining them.

The BMC finally has floated tenders for the oxygen plants worth Rs 86 crore, but according to the civic sources, it won’t come up for another two months and this is the minimum time for its set up.  Not just this, the civic body is now worried thinking about the additional power supply costs that these plants will add to the hospitals.