Kolkata, Jun 25 (PTI) Building liquid oxygen storage facilities in districts of West Bengal is crucial to meet requirement of the life-saving gas, amid a surge in COVID-19 cases, an official of an oxygen-producing company said on Friday.

Such storage units are necessary even though pressure swing adsorption (PSA) plants are being installed to meet demand for medical oxygen, he said.

"Building liquid oxygen storage facilities at the district level is crucial to manage any spike in demand. This should be done even though PSA oxygen generating plants are being set up," Linde India Ltd managing director Abhijit Banerjee said at an interactive session with the Bengal Chamber.

"We must have an arrangement for optimal management and need backups of PSA machines during power outages and maintenance," he said.

In the first wave of coronavirus infection, demand for medical oxygen was around two to three times of average consumption of 850 tonnes per day in the pre-COVID period.

Demand soared by 11 times to about 10,000 tonnes a day amid a raging second wave of COVID-19, he said.

Linde India ramped up its production to 2,900 tonnes per day to strengthen the supply of medical oxygen, the official said.

The company was in dialogue with policymakers to do away with redundant oxygen storage rules, which are among many hurdles for the installation of such facilities, Banerjee 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)