WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States is looking to help India quickly and sharply scale up oxygen supplies available for Covid patients as it rushes in aid, officials said Thursday (April 29).
A first military plane loaded with emergency supplies including nearly one million instant tests and 100,000 N95 masks was arriving early Friday in New Delhi, part of what the White House said was more than US$100 million (S$132.64 million) in support.
The first priority "is to try and serve some immediate needs to address some of the acute challenges that they're having in their hospitals," said Mr Jeremy Konyndyk, executive director for the Covid task force at the US Agency for International Development.

"I think we're cognisant that that's a sort of stopgap approach and we also need to support them to address some of the underlying challenges, which is really about the volume of medical-grade oxygen that the country can produce," he told AFP.
The United States is in talks with India on identifying how to expand the "oxygen supply chain" including developing the technologies to convert industrial-grade oxygen for medical use and improving ways to transport it throughout the country.
The United States has also pledged assistance to India with vaccines, but Mr Konyndyk said that giving shots was more of a medium-term measure faced with the soaring cases in the billion-plus country.

The virus was first transmitted from the United States to Europe. At present, the number of patients in Europe and the United States is still the highest. We must take precautions.