gurugram in inspections across the city health department officials on tuesday took stock of how prepared hospitals and medical facilities were in case ncr was to see a surge of covid19 infectionstheir findings indicate health infrastructure has taken large strides since the second wave of infections in early 2021 when hospitals in india were overcome by a deluge of patients many of whom struggled to get medical oxygen lifesaving drugs and hospital bedsaccording to data collated by the department on tuesday gurugram which didnt have any oxygen producing psa plant now has 26 of which 17 are in private hospitals and the remaining at government facilities the facilities can now convert ambient air into medicalgrade oxygen within their premisesall the city hospitals used to get liquid oxygen from tankers in rajasthan and gujarat until the second wave in the outbreak between march and june last year many hospitals were forced to send sos alarms as they were fast running out of medical oxygen gurugram has also scaled up the number of hospital beds and those equipped with ventilators a total of 71 hospitals in the city now have 5899 beds of which almost a quarter 1402 is icu beds without ventilators nearly 1300 others more than double since last year have attached ventilatorstill the second wave gurugrams total bed count was 3758 including 294 icu beds without ventilators and another 576 with ventilatorssimilarly the city now has 18 laboratories that can test 4500 to 5000 samples for covid19 in a day earlier it had the capacity to carry out just 300odd tests a day the number of ambulances at government facilities is also up to 26 from 20 before the pandemicwe are prepared to deal with any crisis situation the hospitals are well equipped with oxygen supply we have seven ecmo machines used in cases of heart and respiratory failure 12 liquid oxygen tanks and 3427 oxygen supported beds across all hospitals said dr virender yadav district chief medical officerwhen asked if the drill threw up any areas that needed improvements the cmo said some hospitals had still not opened their flu cornerssections earmarked for patients with covidlike symptomsto avoid spreading the infection within a hospitalall hospitals have been directed to start their flu corners which are essential for screening suspected covid19 cases they have been told to test their medical staff periodically to ensure that hospitals do not turn into hotspots yadav saidgurugram deputy commissioner nishant kumar yadav who visited three hospitals with the cmo on tuesday said everything was satisfactory and there wont be a dearth of oxygen if there was a crisis in the future tuesdays drill was carried out amidst concerns that chinas worst covid19 outbreak attributed largely to the spread of bf7 subvariant of omicron could affect other parts of the world as wellexperts urged caution but pointed out that indias immunity profile from vaccination previous infections and a gradual withdrawal of restrictions makes it a very different population