Indian Railways has deployed a total of 503 isolation coaches at Delhi railway stations.

COVID-19 isolation coaches of Indian Railways: Keeping in view the growing number of COVID-19 cases in the country, Piyush Goyal-led Indian Railways is providing converted isolation coaches to states on their requests. Indian Railways has, so far, converted as many as 5,321 non-AC sleeper class coaches of ICF variety (older design) into isolation coaches for patients infected with the novel coronavirus. According to PTI, Indian Railways has deployed a total of 503 isolation coaches at Delhi railway stations. Out of these 503 coaches, 267 isolation coaches have been stationed at Anand Vihar, 50 isolation coaches each at Shakur Basti, Sarai Rohilla railway stations, among others.

These isolation coaches will work as COVID Care Level 1 centres, where suspected COVID-19 cases or patients with mild symptoms will be kept. Both, suspected as well as confirmed COVID-19 patients will be kept in separate isolation coaches. Besides the national capital, the state of Uttar Pradesh has requested for Indian Railways’ COVID care centres in 24 locations, while the state of Telangana has requested for 60 isolation coaches in three locations.

It has been reported that 16 zonal railways were asked to convert 5,000 older non-AC coaches, surplus to Indian Railways’ operational needs, for this purpose. Each isolation coach of Indian Railways has the capacity to carry a total of 16 patients, which translates into 80,000 isolation beds. Also, 20,000 coaches have been set aside by the national transporter for future needs.

Each sleeper class coach has been divided into eight cabins and all the middle berths have been removed. Two toilets out of the four toilets have been merged into bathrooms. The coaches have been provided with power plug sockets, oxygen cylinders, plastic curtains, etc. On each coach conversion, Indian Railways has spent around Rs 2 lakh, therefore, over Rs 100 crore has been spent on the conversion of 5,321 coaches. To station these coaches, 215 stations have been identified. In 85 of these stations, Indian Railways would deploy its own healthcare professionals, while in the remaining 130 stations, states will arrange the healthcare professionals.