New Delhi, May 1 (IANS): To ease the availability of key medical equipment and medicines, domestic airlines have increased their cargo-hauling operations to ferry essential items.

SpiceXpress, the air cargo arm of SpiceJet, airlifted 1,100 oxygen concentrators from Singapore to Bengaluru in multiple consignments.

The medical device is used to provide oxygen to ease difficulty in breathing as it extracts concentrated quantities of oxygen from ambient air.

SpiceXpress had on April 24 airlifted 800 oxygen concentrators followed by another consignment of 1,000 oxygen concentrators on April 28 from Hong Kong to Delhi.

These oxygen concentrators had been ordered by SpiceHealth for emergency use and distribution across India.

SpiceXpress had used its A340 wide-body cargo plane to airlift the 600 oxygen concentrators from the US while its B737 freighter aircraft is airlifting the concentrators from Singapore.

Besides, IndiGo's cargo team on Friday flew in oxygen concentrators from Hong Kong to Delhi via Kolkata, to help ease the current situation in the city.

On Thursday, Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri had said that the first consignment of oxygen concentrators have arrived from Germany on an Air India flight.

"Every stakeholder of India's civil aviation sector is making a meaningful contribution in our unrelenting fight against COVID," he tweeted.

India is reporting new record daily increases in coronavirus infections, prompting new lockdowns and restrictive measures to curb the spread of the pandemic.

The exponential rise has lifted the demand for these medical types of equipment that are used to provide oxygen to Covid-19 patients especially as the country faces a supply crunch in the availability of medical oxygen.