TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan’s Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation donated oxygen generators and respirators to India to help the country with its campaign to combat its COVID-19 outbreak, reports said Wednesday (Aug. 25).

In addition, Indian students at the Tzu Chi University have also collected funds to help fight against the coronavirus back home, CNA reported. The Hualien-based university and the SRM Institute of Science and Technology in India's southeastern state of Tamil Nadu have cooperated for seven years, the Taiwanese foundation said.

As the Indian college’s hospital and research center had been continuously treating COVID patients and testing vaccines, the Tzu Chi Foundation decided to donate 162 oxygen generators, five respirators, and other goods during India’s fourth COVID wave in April. At the time, about 250 to 300 suspected virus patients were being admitted to the hospital per day.

The two sides held a virtual ceremony on Wednesday to mark the donations and highlight bilateral cooperation. Tzu Chi University said that since the beginning of the pandemic, it has donated a total of 200,000 COVID test kits to eight countries.

The Tzu Chi Foundation has also been involved in a program to bring in 5 million BioNTech vaccine doses from Germany to donate to the government. The project is expected to bear results in the near future, according to media reports.