Staff members transfer medical supplies at an airport in the China-Russia border city of Manzhouli in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, April 17, 2020. /Xinhua

WUHAN, April 25 (Xinhua) -- A plane carrying medical supplies took off at 8:34 p.m. Friday and left Wuhan, a central Chinese city once hardest hit by COVID-19, for New York.

The flight was operated by China Southern Airlines and loaded with nearly 20 tonnes of medical supplies on board. It was the airlines' first passenger flight that was used for delivering cargos from the province.

The airlines also planned to operate more cargo flights from Wuhan to San Francisco, Rome, Paris, London and Frankfurt to send medical supplies produced by local companies to help with the coronavirus fight, said a source with the air company's Hubei branch.

The airlines decided to use passenger planes to deliver cargo on March 29 and sent 176,000 tonnes of cargo on the first converted flight from south China's Guangzhou to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on April 3.

As of Thursday, China Southern Airlines had run 255 converted all-cargo flights which sent 2,930 tonnes of cargos in total to 22 countries and regions, including Italy, France, Canada, Australia, Turkey, Kenya, Japan and the Republic of Korea.