Calls for help on social media for hospital beds, oxygen cylinders, Remdesivir were aplenty during India's second COVID wave. Our mother, Meenakshi Bhardwaj, breathed her last at Batra Hospital in New Delhi on 1 May after battling the virus. Twelve people, including our mother, lost their lives that day at the hospital as it ran out of oxygen. This was widely reported in the media.
In the light of this, Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare Bharati Pawar's written statement on 20 July informing the Parliament that no death had been reported due to shortage of oxygen during the second wave of COVID-19 is an affront to thousands of grieving families that lost their loved ones. Delhi's Batra Hospital told the Delhi High Court on 1 May that 11 patients and a doctor at the hospital had died due to oxygen shortage.