LONDON (Reuters) – There is no national shortage of oxygen to treat COVID-19 patients, British health minister Matt Hancock said on Tuesday, but some patients had to go different hospitals when local capacity has been used up.
“The limitation is not the supply of oxygen itself, it is the ability to get the oxygen… through the physical oxygen supply systems within hospitals, and that essentially becomes a constraint on an individual hospital’s ability to take more COVID patients,” Hancock told lawmakers.
“There is no constraint – that we are anywhere near – on the national availability of oxygen (or) oxygenated beds. It does mean … that sometimes we have to move patients to a different part – as local as possible – but occasionally across the country, to make sure they get the treatment that they need.”
(Reporting by Sarah Young and Paul Sandle, writing by Alistair Smout; editing by Michael Holden)
