An acute shortage of medical oxygen has worsened India’s ferocious second wave of the coronavirus, with hospitals forced to turn patients back as families scramble to arrange oxygen cylinders for their loved ones being treated at home.

Indian social media is replete with accounts of people dying for lack of oxygen, which is being sold at humongous prices in black markets where a cylinder is being sold at as much as 30 times its actual cost.

In such a scenario, at least two gurdwaras or Sikh temples in and around the capital, New Delhi, have arranged an “oxygen langar” to provide free oxygen to patients who need it, Al Jazeera reports.

A patient breathes with the help of oxygen provided by a gurdwara or Sikh temple in Ghaziabad. — AFP
A patient breathes with the help of oxygen provided by a gurdwara or Sikh temple in Ghaziabad. — AFP

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