New Delhi: The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) said Friday its board of directors had approved a loan of 500 million U.S. dollars to support India to prepare its national health system for the threat posed by COVID-19.
The India COVID-19 Emergency Response and Health Systems Preparedness Project, cofinanced with the World Bank, will support India in addressing significant challenges posed to the public health system, according to a statement by the AIIB.
The financing will enable India to scale up efforts to limit transmission of cases, strengthen the health system to expand its response capacity and enhance preparedness to manage future outbreaks, the statement said.
The project will also support the purchase of medical equipment, enhanced disease detection capabilities and strengthened research.
The loan is part of AIIB’s COVID-19 Crisis Recovery Facility created to support AIIB members’ urgent economic, financial and public health pressures and quick recovery from the crisis.
The facility has an initial size of between 5 billion and 10 billion U.S. dollars.
With addition of 3390 fresh cases in past 24 hours, the number of novel coronavirus cases in India rose to 56,342 on Friday while a total of 103 people succumbed to the fatal virus in the same period.
According to Health Ministry data, the country has now 37,916 active cases. So far, 1,886 people have lost their lives to the pandemic across the nation, as per government data.
The total number of recoveries have now improved to 16539.
