The Indian Navy's multilateral exercise 'Milan' scheduled to be held from March 18, 2020 off Visakhapatnam may be called off amid fears over the coronavirus outbreak, reports said.
The countries to whom invitations have been sent are Indonesia, France, Mozambique, Sudan, Israel, Qatar, Thailand, Malaysia, Australia, Somalia, Kenya, Egypt, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Myanmar, New Zealand, USA, Tanzania, Comoros, Maldives, Brunei, Philippines, Japan, UK, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Mauritius, Cambodia, Singapore, South Korea, South Africa, Kuwait, Iran, Madagascar, Bangladesh, Russia, Djibouti, Eritrea, Bahrain, UAE and Seychelles.
The coronavirus outbreak will force the Indian Navy to revoke the invite to virus-hit nations. Further, India will not take the risk to add strain to its Navy personnel who are expected to be deployed for quarantine missions in the next few days.
The government has asked the Army, Navy and Air Force to be prepared for quarantine facilities for over 2500 suspected cases in the coming days, according to the sources cited by news agency ANI.
New dates are being worked out for the Milan exercise in which around 40 countries were supposed to participate.