MEIL establishes 500 COVID beds in 72 hours in Tamil Nadu

Last week, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin inaugurated 500 scalable oxygenated bed facilities at Thoppur Government Hospital in Madurai. According to MEIL, they could complete the entire work of setting up a 500-bed facility in a record time of 72 hours with the active contribution of Credai and G Square Realtors.

New Delhi: At a time, when southern state Tamil Nadu is dealing with over 3 lakh active COVID-19 cases, infrastructure and real estate firms are aiding the state government in ramping up temporary beds and medical equipment across the state. As a part of this effort, Hyderabad-based Megha Engineering and Infrastructures Ltd (MEIL) is setting up beds in hospitals that already have oxygen facilities. 

Last week, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin inaugurated 500 scalable oxygenated bed facilities at Thoppur Government Hospital in Madurai. The hospital will provide free-of-cost oxygen beds to the patients. According to MEIL, they could complete the entire work of setting up a 500-bed facility in a record time of 72 hours with the active contribution of Credai and G Square Realtors. 

"Since the day the pandemic has spread like a wildfire, and there was an acute shortage of oxygen, MEIL stepped in and is augmenting oxygen supply to hospitals. The top management and the entire Megha team is concentrating only on this aspect of mitigating the oxygen crunch. We at MEIL feel that it is our topmost priority in serving the nation," MEIL Director B Srinivasa Reddy said. 

Director MEIL has added that they will soon establish 200 PSA (Pressure Swing Adsorption) plants and also embark on manufacturing of cryogenic tanks. He said that DRDO and the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural gas are cooperating with MEIL in this aspect. He said that their firm has been supplying medical oxygen to hospitals in both the Telugu States free of cost and has imported and donated 11 Cryogenic tanks to the Telangana government.

Tamil Nadu government has been following a three-pronged strategy to deal with COVID-19 cases - while mild cases are quarantined at home, the moderate cases are sent to COVID-19 care centers (which are re-purposed exhibition halls, buildings with multiple beds) and only the severe cases are provided hospital beds. 

Currently, Tamil Nadu is reporting nearly 35,000 COVID-19 cases everyday, whereas the daily recoveries are around 30,00. Daily deaths being reported are over 450 for the past few days and so far, over 21,800 persons have lost their lives to the pandemic.