Longest drone flight delivers medical supplies from Nagaland's Mokokchung to Tuensang

A drone flew for a distance of 90 kilometers from Nagaland's Mokokchung to Tuensang to deliver medical supplies on Saturday. This was part of a pilot project by the Indian Medical Council of Medical Research (ICMR) Drone Response and Outreach in North East (i-Drone).

According to the i-Drone team, it was the longest flight ever by drone carrying medicines in India.

The drone took about half an hour to deliver the medicines and then returned within the same time, making its total travel time nearly an hour. The drone equipped with about 3,525 units of medical supplies took about 28 minutes to reach Tuensang from Mokokchung.

The drone flight travelled 90 km, which takes seven to eight hours to reach Nagaland's Tuensang.

In a tweet, chief minister Neiphiu Rio said that ICMR Delhi and the state government scripted a new chapter in the history of public health practices. In collaboration with IIT, Kanpur, the ICMR developed i-Drone is the first of its kind in South Asia to be the first flying commercial drone in the region.

This aims at supplying the COVID-19 vaccines and essential medical supplies.