The Russian space agency has been forced to suspend its rocket tests after it donated almost all of its oxygen supplies to hospitals where COVID-19 patients are in desperate need as a new wave of the pandemic weighs on Russia’s hospitals.

Dmitry Rogozin, the Roscosmos CEO, wrote on Twitter saying that Roscosmos (the Russian space agency) was doing whatever it could to help the COVID-19 relief effort.

He wrote: “We have been transferring almost all the oxygen produced by our enterprises to medical institutions for three months now, forcing us to postpone the testing of rocket engines.”

The current wave of COVID-19 has hit Russia hard breaking its record of daily deaths after recording 820 COVID-19 created deaths in the last 24 hours.

The World Health Organisation reported that oxygen shortages are not only affecting Russia with more than half a million people in low and middle-income countries lacking access to oxygen every day.

The United States is also struggling to supply oxygen to COVID-19 patients, according to CNN, hospitals in Florida, South Carolina, Texas and Louisiana are struggling to source sufficient oxygen as cases are surging and hospitalisation are mounting.

Bloomberg reported that NASA had to postpone the launch of a satellite after they said in a statement that: “The ongoing need for medical liquid oxygen due to the pandemic has impacted the delivery of liquid nitrogen needed for launches.”

Elon Musk, the founder of Space x, also commented on the situation Tweeting that the lack of oxygen is currently a “limiting factor” for space missions.

According to John Hopkins University Russia has confirmed 6,785,465 cases of COVID-19 since the outbreak of the pandemic with 178,457 COVID-19 related deaths.