Six million face masks and 350 ventilators have cleared customs at Milan's Malpensa airport and Pratica Di Mare military airport near Rome, Italy's foreign minister Luigi Di Maio announced on Tuesday.
"At Malpensa and Pratica Di Mare airports, 350 ventilators and around six million face masks arrived today alone. Other material will arrive tomorrow," Di Maio wrote on Facebook.
Di Maio's post thanked "customs staff who rapidly cleared the parcels and are delivering them to the civil protection agency".
The civil protection agency will distribute the supplies - crucial to Italy's fight against its dramatic Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak - to hospitals across Italy, Di Maio noted.
Italy needs 100 million face masks per month to protect frontline medical staff from Covid-19, a number that will be regularly available from this week, foreign minister Luigi Di Maio wrote last Friday on Facebook.
