Free oxygen at Sikh temples as India’s COVID crisis worsens

Gurdwaras in and around New Delhi have arranged ‘oxygen langar’ to provide free oxygen to patients who need it.

An acute shortage of medical oxygen has worsened India’s ferocious second wave of the coronavirus, with hospitals forced to turn patients back as families scramble to arrange oxygen cylinders for their loved ones being treated at home. Indian social media is replete with accounts of people dying for lack of oxygen, which is being sold at humongous prices in black markets where a cylinder is being sold at as much as 30 times its actual cost. In such a scenario, at least two gurdwaras or Sikh temples in and around the capital, New Delhi, have arranged an “oxygen langar” to provide free oxygen to the COVID-19 patients who need it.