The Indian Air Force (IAF) has started airlifting oxygen tankers from their place of use to the filling stations across the country to speed up its distribution, the IAF said on Friday.
The IAF on Thursday airlifted three empty oxygen containers to Panagarh in West Bengal where these will be filled up and supplied to different centres for Covid relief, an IAF official said. The IAF used its C-17 and Il-76 heavy-lift aircraft to move the containers, he said. The IAF also ferried Covid testing set-up to Leh.
Doctors and nursing staff have been airlifted from Kochi, Mumbai, Vizag and Bengaluru for setting up of the DRDO hospital at Delhi. Oxygen containers of the DRDO have also been airlifted from Bengaluru for Covid centres in Delhi.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had on Thursday chaired a high-level meeting to review the oxygen supply across the country and discuss ways and means to boost its availability. He spoke about the need to work rapidly on multiple aspects – increasing production, increasing the speed of distribution and using innovative ways to provide oxygen support to health facilities.
Meanwhile, India recorded 3,32,730 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, the highest single-day spike since the pandemic broke out last year. India has crossed the mark of 3 lakh COVID-19 cases for two consecutive days now. This has taken the cumulative count of the COVID infection in the country to 1,62,63,695.
