More than one lakh oxygen concentrators cleared till May 4 by customs: Centre to High Court

New Delhi, May 05: The Centre on Wednesday told the Delhi High Court that from April 24 to May 4 it has cleared over one lakh oxygen concentrators and only 907 units were pending clearance as of Tuesday.

In a status report filed before a bench of Justices Vipin Sanghi and Rekha Palli, the central government has said that it has cleared 1,09,689 oxygen concentrators in the given period.

Amicus curiae and senior advocate Rajshekhar Rao, during the hearing, told the court that according to a status report filed earlier by the Centre as on May 2 22,920 concentrators were there in the customs warehouse of which 1,921 were pending clearance.

He also told the bench that according to the latest status report of May 5, 169.7 kgs of Remdesivir API and 1.61 lakh units if Remdesivir injections have been cleared by customs from April 24 to May 4.

Besides that 1,41,413 ventilators and its accessories have been cleared during the same period and 1,755 units are pending approval of the customs department, the status report has said. It also states that 234 oxygen plants, 276 empty oxygen cylinders and 1,131 devices used for generating the life saving gas as well as 30,000 vaccines imported from various countries have also been cleared by the customs till May 4.

It further said that 14,163 diagnostic kit reagents were also cleared by customs and 6,465 units of the same were pending approval during the same period.

The report was submitted pursuant to the court's direction to ensure that all COVID-19 related medical equipment and medicines are cleared by customs expeditiously in view of the surge in infections and shortage of infrastructure like oxygen concentrators, testing kits, etc.