COVID-19: IAF ensuring uninterrupted supply of essential commodities

Amid the coronavirus outbreak, the Indian Air Force (IAF) is making all efforts to ensure uninterrupted supply of essential commodities to the states.

On Friday, the IAF's C-17, C-130, IL-76, An-32 and Dornier aircraft dropped essential commodities at Mumbai, Bengaluru, Guwahati and Leh in the night.

Apart from this, the IAF flown over 140 sorties to ferry loads over 200 tonnes to locations across the country.

The government on March 24 announced a complete lockdown of the entire country for 21 days to fight COVID-19. All road, rail and air services will remain suspended during the lockdown. However, freight movement have been carrying essential commodities across the country.

Essential services like medical shops, petrol pumps, grocery stores milk booths and online shopping have been exempted from the lockdown.

With 40 deaths and 1,035 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, India on Saturday witnessed the sharpest ever increase in coronavirus cases, taking the tally of the infected people in the country to 7,447, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.