The Indian Railways Covid-19 isolation coaches are back in demand months after being kept on standby, due to the rising cases of coronavirus infection.
The railways’ western zone has received a demand from Nandurbar, a Maharashtra district close to the Gujarat border, for around 95 coaches and 1,500 beds.
A memorandum of understanding signed between Western Railways and the district authorities on April 11 noted, “Each Covid-19 care rake will have 20 coaches, comprising modified Sleeper and General coaches; each coach can accommodate 16 patients. The coaches will be suitably positioned as mutually agreed upon between the district administration of Nandurbar and divisional administration of Mumbai division of Western Railways.”
The district is currently under lockdown till April 15 and has reported close to 400 cases daily since March. About 51,751 new Covid-19 cases were reported in Maharashtra on Monday, which is the lowest one-day count since April 5, taking the total tally to 3,458,996, along with 258 fatalities reported on Monday, taking the toll to 58,245.
Of the 258 deaths, 169 occurred in the previous 48 hours, 59 in the past week and the remaining are from the period before that.
According to the railways, the Covid-19 isolation coaches were designed to be used for patients with mild symptoms in areas where states have “exhausted the facilities” and need to augment capacities for isolation of both suspected and confirmed cases.
For the basic infrastructure and maintenance, the railways will be responsible, for cleaning and sanitization of platforms, provision of housekeeping materials like linen and blankets, management of bio-toilets, power and electric supply arrangements, watering, communication facilities, and signage and marking of different areas.
It said in its guidelines for the coaches last year that it will also provide catering and oxygen cylinders to the coaches.
In April last year, the center built its first prototype of a Covid coach, though by May it was ready to deploy 5,231 railway coaches across 215 stations in 15 states considering the possibility of an increase in cases of Covid-19.
But with little demand from the states for these coaches, on May 21, 2020, the Railway Board wrote to its zones to reconvert 60% of the Covid-19 coaches into normal ones to be utilized on Shramik Special trains launched to ferry stranded migrant workers back to their homes in the Indian hinterland. For the last few months, they have remained unoccupied.
