A special Air India flight will fly to China on Sunday to bring back medical supplies.
File photo of Air India flights (Photo Credits: PTI)
On April 5, the first medical cargo flight from India will leave for China. This special Air India flight will be used to bring medical cargo from China, including novel coronavirus test kits. The governments of both countries are hoping that more such flights will operate between India and China in the near future.
Going by reports, the flight on Sunday will bring back antibody rapid tests which serve as an alternative to RT-PCR tests for confirmation of Covid-19. The Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) has already placed an order for 10 lakh test kits, however, it is unclear how many of these will be imported from China.
Since the outbreak of Covid-19, authorities in both India and China have been coordinating efforts to reduce the spread of the disease. Chinese official media on Saturday revealed that 95 police officers and 46 medical workers in the country died while battling the surge in novel coronavirus cases that originated from Wuhan city in Hubei province.
China, on April 2, reported 35 new imported cases of novel coronavirus, referring to Chinese nationals who contracted the infection in a foreign country and brought it back home with them. Restrictions of movement and closure of businesses in Hubei province been lifted, however, the same is yet to be done for the city of Wuhan. In a bid to remember those who at the forefront of the country’s battle against the pandemic, China on Saturday observed three-minutes of nationwide silence when cars on the roads halted and air-sirens were rung across the country.
