RANCHI: Nearly 1,000
passengers, who are arriving by trains from high-burden states to Ranchi and
Hatia railway
stations, will be screened for Covid-19 from Tuesday onwards.
A decision in this regard was taken by top officials of the
Ranchi district administration during a meeting with their counterparts of the Ranchi railway division at the latter’s headquarters at Hatia.
Talking to TOI, Bundu sub-divisional officer Utkarsh Gupta said, “We decided to increase the number of daily tests at Ranchi and Hatia railway stations. We are targeting to
test 500 passengers at each station daily.”
At present, testing at both these stations is voluntary. However, the state health department, in a recent order, had asked the Ranchi administration to test all passengers arriving at these stations from outside the state.
As of Monday, two teams of health workers were collecting samples from incoming passengers voluntarily at Ranchi and Hatia stations. But the footfall at the sample collection booths is relatively low. Meanwhile, the administration has no plans to depute more teams at the railway station immediately despite the decision to test more passengers.
Gupta said health workers will primarily target passengers arriving from New Delhi, Punjab, Maharashtra, Kerala, Telangana and Tamil Nadu. Public address systems will be used at the stations to encourage passengers to get themselves tested.
As per estimates, as many as 15 trains are currently passing through these two stations in Jharkhand. Ranchi rail division chief public relations officer Niraj Kumar declined to comment on the development when contacted. However, sources said it is not possible to compulsorily test every passenger who arrived at the two stations.
“There will be utter chaos if one has to test 10,000 people daily. So, testing has to be done on random passengers,” a senior official of the district administration said.
Testing at these stations will be done with Rapid Antigen Test kits, RT-PCR and TruNat machines, Gupta said.