As COVID-19 is peaking in Ukraine, steel companies have increased oxygen supplies to hospitals. One tonne of oxygen sustains about 100 patients. Metinvest Group has boosted the supplies to Ukrainian hospitals to 100 tonnes a day. This statement was made by Oleksandr Vyshniakov, Director for Regional Development at Metinvest.
“Since 2020, we have been sourcing oxygen to hospitals where Rinat Akhmetov’s businesses operate. We have known since early this year that in the autumn there will be an increase in the daily coronavirus cases and deaths and there will be a further wave of infections. Therefore, we abandoned cylinders in the hospitals of Zaporizhia, Mariupol, Avdiivka, and Porkovsk, as they are unsafe, expensive, and ineffective. Instead, we invested in the hospital infrastructure, installing oxygen stations there,” said Oleksandr Vyshniakov.
According to him, Metinvest Group has decided to boost oxygen supplies, as the consumption is rising this autumn.
“Last month alone, we sourced more than 1,700 tonnes of liquid oxygen. We supplied 80 tonnes daily in October, while the figure reaches 100 tonnes in November,” Oleksandr Vyshniakov went on to say.
In 2020, Rinat Akhmetov, SCM businesses, FC Shakhtar, and the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation were the first to give a helping hand to the country to fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. On Rinat Akhmetov’s initiative, the Foundation has channelled over UAH 450 million for these purposes as part of its project, Fight against COVID-19 in Ukraine. The drive has helped 1.4 million people survive. This is the biggest donation of one philanthropist to the Ukrainian healthcare system over the entire period of the country’s independence. Over 500 clinics and hospitals across the country have received more than 1,000 medical devices, including 207 ventilators, as well as hundreds of thousands of rapid lateral flow tests, personal protection equipment, and consumables.
Since the outbreak of the pandemic, the Vadym Novynsky Foundation allocated more than UAH 100 million to curb the spread of COVID-19, in particular to purchase and distribute ventilators, PCR tests, special labs, and personal protective equipment among hospitals in Donetsk, Kherson, Mykolaiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhia, and Kharkiv oblasts. Moreover, the Foundation provided UAH 3.8 million in financial support to 31 families of doctors who died from COVID-19.