India shows signs of self-sufficiency in PPE production

By, thefocus_admin - May 6, 2020 09:49:02

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Special Correspondent

New Delhi : In a major relief to medical fighters across the country, the production capacity of personal protective equipment (PPE) in India has multiplied massively by 50 times in the period of just 30 days. Similarly, production of N 95 mask also witnessed significant increase.

This news has come from the official sources of the Union Health Ministry. When the COVID-19 pandemic initially struck India, India was not sufficiently geared up either for the medical staff with the supply of the PPE kits and N95 masks. While we all went for a lockdown and country shutdowns, the Union Government took the significant decisions for ramping up on PPE and N95 masks production. By the end of March, only 3,300 kits were being produced per day nationwide. But just a month later, the manufacturing capacity has increased to 1,86,000 per day.

The highest recorded single-day production of PPE kits was on May 2, which was around 2.06 lacs. But the average output is 1.5 lac per day, which shows efficient scaling up for a country like India, where no production of such PPE kits has happened before this pandemic. The majority of PPE manufacturing is happening in Hoshiarpur, Visakhapatnam, Rajkot, Hyderabad, Bangalore and the cities are very well regarded as the PPE-manufacturing hubs now.

“Since the production has increased, the central government has so far provided 19.22 lakh PPE kits to the states,” says the source. “From now on, the supply of PPE kits will be even faster, and no medical staff will feel the shortage,” the source added.

A similar increasing production trend has been reported for the N95 masks also. The country was producing 68,000 N95 masks per day till March 30, which have scaled up to more than 2,30,000 on April 30. The central government has so far provided 52 lakh masks to the States.

A personal protective equipment (PPE) kit comprises of gloves, gowns, shoe covers, head covers, masks, respirators, eye protection, face shields, and goggles.