Indian Defence forces on Sunday are expressing their gratitude towards Coronavirus frontline ‘warriors’ across the country like the doctors, nurses and police personnel who are fighting the COVID-19 pandemic with the IAF carrying out a fly past and showing petals by fighter jets over state capitals and performances by army bands outside hospitals.

Chief of Defence Staff, Gen Bipin Rawat had announced on Friday, “On behalf of armed forces, we want to thank all Covid-19 warriors,” he said, expressing his gratitude to the doctors, nurses, sanitation workers, police, home guards alike.

The three service chiefs started the “gesture of special gratitude” with laying wreath at the police memorial in Delhi this morning in honour of police personnel serving to enforce the lockdown.

Sukhoi-30 MKI, MiG-29 and Jaguars conducted a flypast over Rajpath in the national capital and aerial shower of flowers was done over the India Gate and Red Fort.

Today’s spectacular show includes a flypast from Srinagar to Thiruvananthapuram by the IAF and another one starting from Dibrugarh in Assam to Kutch in Gujarat and is including both transport and fighter aircraft.

The hospitals treating Coronavirus patients are being showered with flower petals across 23 locations in the country including Delhi, Leh, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Mumbai, Jaipur, Dispur, Shillong (subject to confirmation by state administration) Itanagar, Trivandrum and Chennai.

The Navy in the evening will lit up ships docked at major ports, including Mumbai and Chennai.

Indian Coast Guard ships will also be lit up at 25 locations. Ten coast guard helicopters will shower flower petals over Covid-19 hospitals in Daman, Mumbai, Goa, Chennai and Port Blair.

This is the third such display of gratitude towards the frontline ‘Corona warriors’ which was started in March by Prime Minister Narendra Modi who requested people to clap from balconies and ‘thali and taali’ gesture of thanks for the health and sanitation workers was performed with much enthusiasm by the countrymen. In yet another display of solidarity candles and diyas were lit by people, next week.

Meanwhile, with 2,644 people testing positive for Coronavirus in 24 hours, India reported  the biggest single-day jump, taking the total number of COVID-19 cases to 39,980. The number of fatalities reached 1,301 with 83 people dying due to the outbreak, according to Health Ministry data.