india

Updated: Apr 20, 2020 17:15 IST

Chinese companies are expected to send about 20 planeloads of Covid-19-related medical supplies to India over the next one week, a senior government official said.

Requests for these flights between April 21 and 27 have been placed with the Civil Aviation Administration of China, the official said. The continuing cooperation is seen as a signal that the two countries are in sync on the Covid-19 battle despite some concerns that led India to impose restrictions on foreign takeover of Indian companies.

Over the last two weeks beginning April 4, around 24 flights have taken off from Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Xi’an and Hong Kong to India carrying 390 tonnes of medical supplies.

These include RT-PCR test kits, Rapid Antibody tests, thermometers, personal protection equipment.

According to information compiled by the external affairs ministry, the major consignees were Imperial Life Sciences, HLL, Matrix Labs, Invex Healthcare, Max and companies of the Reliance, Tata, Adani group. There were four state governments in this list too: Karnataka, Assam, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan.

The consignments from China included the 650,000 testing kits received in two cargo flights last week. Officials had then said that Chinese companies have been contracted for nearly 15 million PPE kits and 1.5 million rapid testing kits by the government and private firms.

Indian ambassador to China, Vikram Misri, last week described facilitating India’s imports of Covid-19-related medical equipment and keeping the drug production supply chain open the “best” signal from China for bilateral ties.

India had also sent a plane load of medical equipment to China’s coronavirus-hit city of Wuhan when the crisis was at its peak in the neighbouring country.