Medical supplies from Vietnam arrived in India on May 21 morning.

A consignment of 109 ventilators and 50 oxygen concentrators, the first batch of the gift sent by the Vietnamese Government and people, has arrived in Indira Gandhi International Airport at 00:35 on May 21 (local time), reported The Policy Times.

The Ministry of External Affairs of India, annouced the news in Facebook Fanpage.

This is the first batch of the gift sent by the Vietnamese Government and people to the Indian Government and people in their fight against Covid-19. Source: Vietnamese embassy in India

The second batch, which includes 100 ventilators, 275 concentrators, 1300 oxy cylinders, and 50,000 masks will be loaded into and shippeed by an Indian Navy ship from Ho Chi Minh City to Chennai in a couple of days.

The total value of the relief amounts to 1.5 million U.S. dollars.

Most of the support in cash and in kind has been channeled through Vietnam Buddhist Sanghas and Vietnam-India Friendship Association to the Indian Red Cross Society as a show of solidarity with the Indian people.

Vietnam stands ready to assist India in any way it can in Indian efforts to tide over the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic although Vietnam is now facing the fourth wave of the Covid-19 outbreak which added more than 1,700 new cases since April 27.

Vietnamese Ambassador to India Pham Sanh Chau (left) at the Indira Gandhi International Airport to receive the shipment.

Arindam Bagchi, official spokesperson of the Union ministry of external affairs of India, sends out a thank you tweet.

India reported 259,551 new infections on May 21, continuing with the declining trend seen since a record high May 7, reported Bloomberg. The total tally inched past 26 million, while deaths rose by more than 4,200 to 291,331, according the heath ministry.

The country also is seeing a raft of secondary ailments, from dangerous inflammatory syndrome in children to rising cases of a deadly black fungal infection called mucormycosis, which India’s government has asked states to designate as an epidemic.

Hannah Nguyen