"No Deaths Due To Lack Of Oxygen In 12 States": Health Ministry Sources

A row broke out after junior Health Minister Bharati Praveen Pawar told the Rajya Sabha "no deaths due to lack of oxygen were reported" in the second Covid wave.

Data from 12 states indicates there were no deaths due to a lack of medical oxygen in the second Covid wave, Health Ministry sources said on Wednesday afternoon, a week after the centre asked states and UTs to collect and submit information on this topic. Thirteen states have submitted this data so far, sources said, adding that only Punjab had marked deaths - four of them - as "suspicious". The 12 that have claimed zero deaths due to a lack of medical oxygen - during the weeks that individuals and hospitals mounted desperate appeals on social media and in courtrooms - are Odisha, Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Nagaland, Assam, Sikkim, Tripura, Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh, as well as the UTs of Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir. Last week the government asked all states and UTs to provide data that, it said, would be collated and presented before Parliament's monsoon session - which has faced repeated adjournments over several issues, including the "no deaths due to lack of oxygen" claim, ends on August 13.