Indian Air Force & Navy Step Up Efforts to Ferry Oxygen and Medical Supplies

Indian Air Force (IAF) and Indian Navy (IN) have intensified their efforts to aid the civil administration in tackling the current COVID19 situation by ferrying oxygen containers and medical equipment. As on May 07, 2021, the C-17 aircraft of IAFhave conducted 400 sorties from within the country, including 351 to airlift 252 oxygen tankers of the total capacity of 4,904 Metric Tonnes (MT). The cities covered were Jamnagar, Bhopal, Chandigarh, Panagarh, Indore, Ranchi, Agra, Jodhpur, Begumpet, Bhubaneswar, Pune, Surat, Raipur, Udaipur, Mumbai, Lucknow, Nagpur, Gwalior, Vijaywada, Baroda, Dimapur and Hindan.

The IAF aircraft also conducted 59 international sorties to airlift 72 cryogenic oxygen storage containers of 1,233 MT total capacity along with 1,252 empty oxygen cylinders. The containers and cylinders were procured from Singapore, Dubai, Bangkok, UK, Germany, Belgium and Australia. In addition, the C-17 and IL-76 aircraft have been tasked to airlift cryogenic oxygen containers, oxygen generators and ventilators from Israel and Singapore.

The Indian Navy deployed its ships INS Talwar, INS Kolkata, INS Airavat, INS Kochi, INS Tabar, INS Trikand, INS Jalashwa& INS Shardulto ferry oxygen containers/cylinders/concentrators and related equipment from friendly foreign countries. The details are as follows:-

Loading of oxygen containers and other medical supplies has also been planned on INS Tarkash, INS Shardul and INS Jalashwafrom Doha, Kuwait and Muara, Brunei respectively in the coming days.