EU comes to India's aid amid Covid-19 crisis; member states to help with oxygen, medicines

While 20,000 litres of oxygen per week will come from Portugal, 9,000 doses of antiviral drug Remdesivir will fly in from Belgium.

Updated on: Apr 27, 2021, 22:24:02 IST

By Shishir Gupta, Hindustan Times, New Delhi

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As international help continues to pour in for India's fight against the Covid-19 crisis, the European Union on Tuesday said it will deliver oxygen, medicine and essential equipment over the coming days via its member states under the EU Civil Protection Mechanism.

"A shipment of urgently needed oxygen, medicine and equipment will be delivered over the coming days by EU Member States to India," an official EU statement read.

The offer of support from the EU Member States would include 700 oxygen concentrators, 1 oxygen generator, 365 ventilators from Ireland; 9,000 doses of antiviral medicines Remdesivir from Belgium; 80 oxygen concentrators and 75 oxygen cylinders from Romania; 58 ventilators from Luxembourg; 5,503 vials of Remdesivir, 20,000 litres of oxygen per week from Portugal, and 120 ventilators from Sweden.

The EU Civil Protection Mechanism is coordinated by the Emergency Response Coordination Centre of the European Commission.

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"This support has been made in line with the coordinated effort by EU Member States currently underway to pool their resources in responding rapidly to tackle the alarming epidemiological situation in India," the statement read, adding that more support from other member states of the EU is expected for India in the coming days. Countries like France and Germany are also expected to extend support.

Janez Lenarčič, commissioner for crisis management, said the EU is ready to offer the utmost to support India at "this critical time".

This comes as India continues to grapple with the rise in Covid-19 cases. A marginal drop in infections was reported in the past 24 hours. As per the official figures from the Union ministry of health and family affairs, the country witnessed 323,144 new cases in the last 24 hours. With this, India's Covid-19 tally stands at a whopping 17,636,307.

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This is for the sixth consecutive day when more than 300,000 fresh Covid-19 infections have been reported in the country. Several states have been facing a shortage of oxygen supply and ICU beds amid mounting Covid-19 cases. As per the central data, till date, a total of 14,556,209 patients have beaten the deadly contagion while 197,894 have lost their lives to the infection.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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