50 Covid coaches stationed at Delhi's Shakurbasti, Anand Vihar next

NEW DELHI: Fifty rail coaches converted into mobile isolation wards for Coronavirus patients have been stationed at Delhi’s Shakurbasti station and hunt is on for suitable stations in the Capital for deploying 450 more, Railway Board chairman V K Yadav said on Monday.
Train services have been stopped from the city’s Anand Vihar station, where some of these coaches will be deployed.
The 50 coaches entail about 800 beds, Yadav said, adding confirmed patients and those awaiting test results would be put in separate coaches. “In case of confirmed cases, we can put two patients in a cabin but in case of those awaiting test results, we will try our best to keep only one patient a cabin,” he said.
The heavy deployment of isolation coaches in Delhi is part of the measures to fight rising Corona cases in the Capital, decided at a meeting home minister Amit Shah had with the Delhi government.
According to Yadav, the isolation coaches are meant to be used only after a state’s health infrastructure is exhausted. Besides Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Telangana have requisitioned these coaches from the railways.
Yadav said the health ministry has issued a standard operating protocol for these coaches and their control, which will be with the chief medical officer of the state where these are deployed.
The rail board chairman said more than 60 lakh migrants have been ferried to their home states on Shramik Special trains. “Almost all have gone back. Only a few are left. On June 3 we asked state governments for their remaining demand. Demand for 171 Shramik Specials have come in from various states,” he said.
“The average fare for Shramik specials was Rs 600 and around 60 lakh migrants have travelled. The fare was as per normal mail express trains. The Railways recovered only 15% of the cost of operating the Shramik specials,” he said.