As many as 1,952 employees of the Indian Railways have died due to COVID-19 since March 2020, and nearly 1,000 are getting infected daily on an average, Railway Board Chairman and CEO Suneet Sharma said on Monday.
“It [the COVID-19 situation] is a challenge. Railways are no different from any other State or territory...we also have COVID cases...We are in the business of transportation. We need to run trains to transport essential items, passengers as well as freight,” Mr. Sharma said during a press conference.
The Railways are one of the country’s largest employer with around 12 lakh employees.
“This is a dynamic figure. Some days, there are 1,300 cases and on some days 750… things seem to be getting better,” Mr. Sharma added.
“Our employees are getting treatment in our hospitals, we have increased our beds, we have also built new oxygen plants at Railway hospitals ... As of now, we have 4,000 beds occupied by staff and their families. Our effort is to see that they recover quickly,” he said.
While he did not share the total number of employees who have been infected, Mr. Sharma had in April said around 93,000 employees had tested positive for COVID-19.
Oxygen Express
Talking about the ‘Oxygen Express’, Mr. Sharma said the Railways had delivered nearly 4,700 tonne of liquid medical oxygen (LMO) in more than 295 tankers to various States across the country since April 19. So far, 75 such trains have already completed their journey, he said.
On Sunday, an Oxygen Express delivered 831 tonne of LMO, a record for a single day.
Till now, 293 MT of LMO has been offloaded in Maharashtra, 1,334 MT in Uttar Pradesh, 306 MT in Madhya Pradesh, 598 MT in Haryana, 123 MT in Telangana, 40 MT in Rajasthan and 2,011 MT in Delhi, Mr. Sharma said.
The first Oxygen Express to Karnataka has also started its journey from Tatanagar in Jharkhand and is on the way to Bengaluru with 120 MT of Oxygen.