"Oxygen Mock Drill, 22 Turned Blue": Probe Into UP Hospital Owner's Audio

The Agra hospital owner purportedly made the claims amid was an acute shortage of oxygen at his hospital during a raging Covid surge.

The Uttar Pradesh government has said it will carry out an inquiry after the owner of a prominent private hospital in Agra was allegedly caught on audio bragging about how the hospital shut off oxygen supply on April 26 for five minutes in a "mock drill" amid what the owner purportedly claimed was an acute shortage of oxygen at his hospital during a raging Covid surge in the western UP town , and elsewhere in the state. "We were told that even the Chief Minister cannot get oxygen, so start discharging patients. Modi Nagar is dry. We started counseling families. Some were willing to listen but the others said they would not leave. I said ok let's do a mock drill. We will find out who will die and who will survive. So we did that at 7 am. A mock drill was done. No one knows. Then we identified 22 patients. We realised they would die. This was done for 5 minutes. They started turning blue," Arinjay Jain, the owner of Paras Hospital, can be purportedly heard saying in the 1.5-minute audio clip. The hospital also has a Covid facility within its premises. In a statement to the media, Agra District Magistrate Prabhu N Singh claimed there was no death due to lack of oxygen on that day the alleged video was recorded. However, he said a probe would be conducted.