Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that Germany is preparing a “mission of support” for India, where a mutated strain of COVID-19 is causing an explosive rise in infections. 

Germany to send aid to India

“To the people of India I want to express my sympathy on the terrible suffering that COVID-19 has again brought over your communities,” the chancellor said in a post shared on Twitter by her spokesperson Steffan Seibert on Sunday. “The fight against the pandemic is our common fight. Germany stands in solidarity with India and is urgently preparing a mission of support.” 

The post itself contained no details as to what kind of aid was being prepared, but on Monday Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told the Reinische Post that the federal government was “pulling out all the stops to be able to provide support as quickly as possible, for example with oxygen and medication.” 

“The second wave is currently rolling over India with unprecedented power,” he went on to say. “It was right that we acted quickly to stop the entry of the new mutation in Germany.” As of Monday, passengers from India, with the exception of those who hold German citizenship, are barred from entering the federal republic. 

India struggling to get coronavirus under control

The coronavirus situation in India is quickly spiralling out of control. On Monday, the world’s second-largest country by population registered a further 352.991 new coronavirus infections, the fifth day in a row that it recorded a global record for daily cases. 

Investigators are currently scrambling to determine whether a new variant of the virus is linked to the rapid increase in infections. With more than 17 million confirmed infections, India has the second highest total tally in the world, after the USA.