Chennai, May 17 (IANS): Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) will be adding 650 more Oxygen beds this week and has tied up with Omandur Government Hospital, Stanley Medical College and Hospital, Kilpauk Medical College and Hospital and Rajiv Gandhi Government general hospital to refer patients.

The GCC has the biggest facility in the Chennai trade centre at Nandambakkam. Commissioner of GCC, Gagan Singh Bedi told IANS: "We are planning to set up 800 beds and the trade centre has 40 oxygen concentrators for rational use of liquid medical oxygen and patients who can manage with it are using oxygen concentrators."

The Chennai trade centre facility at present has 300 oxygen beds and 60 non oxygen beds. Of this 114 are occupied as on Sunday evening data.

Tamil Nadu health minister Ma Subramaniam has opened an Oxygen centre at Injambakkam community health centre and another one at Meenakshi Engineering college, Vadapalani. Both these centres have 100 oxygen beds each.

The GCC has also ensured generators as backups taking into account the possibilities of power failure and has written to Tangedo for uninterrupted power supply. D Type oxygen cylinders with 46.7 litre capacity have been placed at these centres.

The corporation officials are planning to set up many centres in Chennai with the aim that no patient dies due to non availability of oxygen. The admission to these centres will be on a case to case basis.