New Delhi

It was a hard day full of anxieties for patients of Covid, their families and doctors manaing the scene as oxygen supply in most of the hospitals in Delhi NCR was depleting with each passing hour and no possibility of fresh supplies while the virus kept increasing its footprints and ravaging lives.

Scene outside Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital, Dilshad garden, East Delhi, as the truck laden with oxygen cylinder arrived in the evening

Late evening, as Delhi Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal announced the  supply of oxygen has been replinished, everyone heaved a sigh of relief. Throughout the day family members of the Covid patients kept waiting at designate places for refilling the oxygen cylinders that are being used extensively to help the patients.Soon after his deputy Manish Sisodia raised an alarmed over the fastly depleting oxygen in the hospitals, Kejriwal announced the release of more oxygen for Delhi and he also thanked the government of India.

A woman patient breathing through an oxygen cylinder while waiting for admission in a Noida hospital in UP

Barring Gurugram where most of the hospitals have their own oxygen producing plants, the National capital region of Delhi was reeling under acute shortages of oxygen throughout the day. Doctors kept sending reminders of depleting supplies of the life saving gas throughout the day.

A relative of the Covid patient feels relieved to get oxygen gas cylinder at Dilshad Garden

Kejriwal, who is in self-quarantine after his wife Sunita Kejriwal tested Covid-19 positive, tweeted: "Central govt has increased Delhi's quota of oxygen. We r very grateful to centre for this."

The Chief Minister's tweets came moments after Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia had expressed alarm at the shortage of oxygen in hospitals.

Arrival of truck laden with oxygen gas cylinder creates a flutter outside a hospital in East Delhi 

Amid flood of SOS messages from hospitals regarding shortage of oxygen, Sisodia said around 18,000 Covid-19 patients admitted in different hospitals in Delhi require oxygen support, but the stock of most hospitals was running out.We have been requesting the Centre time and again to increase the oxygen quota for Delhi as it has reached high demand," he added.

A view of the Commonwealth Games Sports Facility, Delhi that has been turned into a Covid isolation center

How fast the Covid continued to spread was evident from the houseful board in the Commonwealth games sports facility that opened last night as a Covid isolation centre and got filled by the morning

Pictures by- Ravi Batra