Plane carrying 56 tons of sanitary material from China arrives in Madrid

A Boeing 777 plane carrying 56 tons of sanitary material from China for Community of Madrid, one of the 17 autonomous communities of Spain, landed at Madrid-Barajas Airport late on Saturday night, the regional government has informed.

Among the equipment on the aircraft, which came from Shanghai, were 315 multi-parameter monitors, which are used in intensive care units.

The material was shipped to Pavilion 10 at the IFEMA exhibition center in Madrid, which is being used as a warehouse for sanitary equipment during the ongoing coronavirus crisis, and will subsequently be distributed among the region's hospitals.

Saturday's arrival was the sixth shipment of sanitary material which has arrived in Madrid from China since April 2, bringing a total of 18 million items, such as facemasks, protective gowns and shoe coverings.

Apart from the monitors, Saturday's arrival contained 1.5 million face masks (including 560,000 FFP2 masks), 560,000 gloves and 158,000 protective gowns.

Madrid is the worst-hit region of Spain by the pandemic with over 62,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 8,332 deaths.