The first international shipment aimed at stemming a devastating Covid-19 surge has arrived in India from the UK.
The shipment unloaded at Delhi airport, including ventilators and oxygen concentrators are set to help hospitals manage oxygen supplies.
Foreign ministry spokesman Arindam Bagchi said it was as a result international co-operation at work, but it is just the first trickle in what needs to be a flood of supplies.
Far more batches of the vaccine will be needed, with India recording 320,000 new infections today, and deaths rising close to 200,000 overall.
So far the US, France and Germany are among nations that pledged to send the desperately needed aid.
France is sending oxygen production units, as well as oxygen containers and respirators.
And India has stepped up its own efforts – the first “Oxygen Express” train, which aims to transport 70 tonnes of the gas, arrived in Delhi.
But around many Indian cities, images still show people waiting outside hospitals in ambulances or lying on makeshift beds, while elsewhere flames rise from the funeral pyres of victims.