Oxygen producers have increased supplies by 10 times since the start of the pandemic

The main producers of medical oxygen have increased its supplies tenfold since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, up to 3,000 tons per day (excluding related industries). Since July 2021 alone, they have increased their total shipment volume by 40%. This was reported to RBC in the press service of the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

What is medical oxygen

Medical oxygen is used to treat patients with diseases of the respiratory system, the circulatory system, and is also necessary for patients in intensive care units and during surgical operations. it is especially in demand for the treatment of patients with pneumonia and coronavirus infection. Medical oxygen differs from technical oxygen in the way of production, packaging and safety measures. Oxygen produced by industrial plants can also be used for medical therapy, but it must first be converted for medical use. The purity of industrial oxygen is 95%, and that of medical oxygen is 99.2%. Oxygen is supplied in liquefied form in tanks and reservoirs or in the form of compressed gas (in cylinders).

How manufacturers ramped up production

The largest producers of medical oxygen in RUSSIA are the German Linde Gas, the French Air Liquide and Cryogas, which was recently acquired by the Sinara group of Dmitry Pumpyansky. But against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic, which caused a lack of oxygen in some regions of Russia, large industrial enterprises (in particular, metallurgical and chemical holdings), which produced technical oxygen for their own needs, for example, in the production of iron and steel, took up its supply.

After the first problems with the supply of oxygen to hospitals that occurred in the fall of 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Trade called on industrial companies to get involved in its production, speeding up the issuance of licenses and the procedure for registering medical oxygen as a medicine in the Ministry of HEALTH, which is necessary to start supplying it to hospitals.