China has opened a “green channel” for granting approval for cargo aircraft carrying medical supplies to India, as New Delhi decided to keep procuring from the communist country test kits and ventilators as well as protective gears required for doctors and nurses taking care of the Covid-19 patients.
“China has opened ‘green channel’ for Indian air cargo transport during the #epidemic and approved 35 cargo flights carrying medical supplies, such as PPEs (Personal Protective Equipment), ventilators and testing kits, to India in the need of the hour,” Sun Weidong, Beijing’s envoy to New Delhi, posted on Twitter on Friday.
Notwithstanding controversy over the quality of the equipment coming from China; India decided to keep procuring from the East Asian nations what it would need to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic in the coming weeks – coveralls, masks and other protective gears for the nurses and the doctors as well as test kits and ventilators for patients.
Anurag Srivastava, the spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), stated that nearly two dozen flights departed from five cities of China for India over the past fortnight – bringing in nearly 400 tonnes of medical equipment, including kits for both RT-PCR (Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction) and Rapid Antibody tests to diagnose Covid-19 virus as well as thermometers and protective gears for healthcare professionals.
“Around 20 more flights are expected to bring supplies from China in the coming days, and this is likely to be stepped up considerably in the next few months as our procurement efforts gain momentum,” Srivastava told journalists in New Delhi.
The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) earlier this week temporarily suspended the use of the rapid test kits India procured from two companies in China. The ICMR acted after receiving complaints from the State Governments about inaccuracy in the results provided by the rapid test kits procured from the two companies of China.
The two companies – Guangzhou Wondfo Biotech Company Limited and Zhuhai Livzon Diagnostics Inc – defended the kits, arguing that the rapid tests to detect presence of Covid-19 antibodies in the blood of a patient was more expected to give accurate results only after the “incubation period” of about seven or eight days following infection by the virus. They also said that the ICMR had approved the test kits before they had started exporting the products to India.
Some protective gears donated by China to India had also been found faulty earlier.