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Country's largest steel maker Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) is planning to set up jumbo medical facilities of about 2,500 beds with gaseous oxygen (GOX) for Covid treatment.

This will be in addition to the facilities currently available at SAIL's five integrated steel plants at Bhilai (Chattisgarh), Bokaro (Jharkhand), Rourkela (Odisha), Durgapur and Burnpur (West Bengal).

These jumbo facilities are being planned outside the existing hospital facilities and shall have oxygen support through a dedicated gas line drawn directly from the steel plants instead of extracting gaseous oxygen from liquid medical oxygen as is being done in the own hospitals of SAIL currently.

At the suggestion of the government, SAIL shall use gaseous oxygen directly as an additional source of oxygen as the demand for liquid medical oxygen is high currently, the company said in a statement.

These 2,500 bed facility will be developed in phased manner in collaboration with the respective state governments. In the first phase, the company will set up about 700 beds which will be scaled up to 2,500 beds across all the five locations.

Currently, there are around 3,000 beds in the five SAIL hospitals and about 45 per cent of beds have been earmarked for Covid patients.

The company remains committed to stand by the nation in fighting against the corona pandemic in every possible way, the SAIL statement added.