Ahmedabad, Apr 19 (PTI) The Ahmedabad civic body has procured 1,000 oxygen cylinders from Kutch district in Gujarat to add more oxygen beds in the city in view of the spike in COVID-19 cases, officials said on Monday.

To cope up with the shortage of medical oxygen in hospitals here, the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) has sought the support of the Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB) to divert industrial oxygen for medical use, they said.

Apart from providing these oxygen cylinders to AMC-run hospitals, the civic body has also planned to provide them to private hospitals designated to treat coronavirus patients, the AMC said in a release.

"We have procured 1,000 oxygen cylinders from Kutch overnight. We will use these cylinders to convert the existing isolation beds in the civic-run hospitals into beds with oxygen supply," said senior IAS officer Rajiv Kumar Gupta, who is overseeing the AMC's coronavirus-related operations.

Gupta further said they would convert 500 existing beds into oxygen beds in the next two days.

With the support of the GPCB, the AMC has managed to divert around 1,500 oxygen cylinders, meant for industrial use, for medical purposes in the city, the civic body's release said.

Due to this, vendors will now have more oxygen cylinders to supply to private hospitals, it said.

The AMC, with the GPCB's help, has also activated a control room for better coordination between private hospitals, oxygen cylinder suppliers and re-fillers, it said.

The civic body is also providing vehicles on rent to those hospitals which need to transport 50 or more oxygen cylinders every day for refilling, the release added.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)