Drones will soon be used to transport vaccines to healthcare centres that are not easily accessible by road under the Telangana government's "Medicine from the Sky" initiative.
A trial project will begin on Saturday and the precious Covid vaccines are not going to be in the cargo for now till the project is finalised.
The project involves undertaking experimental Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) drone flights for the delivery of vaccines using the identified airspace of the Vikarabad district.
The attempt will be to deliver boxes weighing 2-3 kilograms that will take off from Vikarabad district hospital to primary healthcare centres, initially within visual line of sight, up to 500 m, and subsequently beyond it, up to 10 km, within half an hour.
The project has received the final regulatory nod from the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) to conduct the operations in the state.
In a tweet, Union Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia praised the project as "pathbreaking" and said the liberalised Drone Rules 2021 have already opened the floodgates of innovation.
Telangana had launched its ambitious medicine from the sky project in 2019.
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