Amid the rising coronavirus cases in different parts of the country, the Centre has asked several automobile manufactures to manufacture ventilators in order to be used at hospitals treating coronavirus patients.
State-owned Bharat Electronics Ltd has been asked to manufacture 30,000 ventilators in the next two months
and Noida-based firm Agva Healthcare has been given an order by the government to manufacture 10,000 ventilators within a month. It is expected that the supplies of these ventilators would commence in the second week of April.
Defence Research and Development Organisation has been asked to manufacture 20,000 N99 masks per day within the next week.
Notably, hospitals across the country curently have 11.95 lakh N95 masks in stock. It is learnt that additional 5 lakh masks were distributed during the last two days and 1.40 lakhs are being distributed today.
Two domestic manufacturers are producing 50,000 N95 masks per day and it is expected to go up to 1 lakh per day within next week. The government has also given orders for 20 lakh Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to a South Korea firm which has a capacity to produce 1 lakh coveralls per day. It is expected that this company would start supplying the PPE in the next 10 days.
The government has also placed orders for 10 lakh PPE through Ministry of External Affairs with a Singapore-based company and the supplies from this firm is also expected to start soon.
At present, 3.34 lakh PPE are available with hospitals in the country and 3 lakh donated coveralls will arrive in India from abroad by April 4.
Meanwhile, 11 domestic manufacturers of PPE coveralls have qualified so far and orders for 21 lakh have been placed on them. They are supplying 6-7,000 pieces per day and are expected to go up to 15,000 per day by mid-April. One more domestic manufacturer has qualified today and is being given orders for 5 lakh PPE coveralls.
