India is finding every possible way to fight the coronavirus outbreak and keep its citizens safe.
As part of its measures to facilitate quarantine facilities, the government is now eyeing a potential opportunity in its wide railway network.
After a lockdown of its rail network including passenger trains, for the first time, the government started converting railway coaches into quarantine facilities.
“We, at the railways, thought: how can we contribute? So, we came up with this idea and everyone liked it” Indian Railways spokesperson Rajesh Bajpai said in a statement.
In this regard, the government has begun preparations to convert around 5,000 train coaches into isolation wards, which would make up 40,000 beds.
The department is also prepared to convert another 15,000 coaches.
“The coach is a shell and inside, you can provide anything – a drawing-room, a dining room, a kitchen, a hospital,” Bajpai adds.
While states have already converted stadiums, wedding venues, hotels and other public places into quarantines, the Center is worried about lack of space if the number of cases and pace of testing rises further.
In India, every positive case leads to more tracing of connections, followed by an increase in quarantine and isolation facilities.
At this point, home isolation might not be that recommendable in India owing to the country’s high population density.
“There are so many options available and this (the coaches) is one of the options,” says Bajpai.
As the sources say, the government is working on transforming coaches into isolation wards across 130 locations across the country.
Bajpai says it is up to states to decide on what locations they choose for transforming coaches.
“You don’t just need space. We need thousands of doctors and nurses if you really have to make a dent,” says Dr Sumit Sengupta, a pulmonologist.
“Why isolate someone who has symptoms when there is no treatment? Because you don’t want them to spread the infection,” says the doctor.
“This will work only as part of a larger strategy,” he adds. “Test, trace and isolate. Test should come first,” adds the doctor.
Stay tuned to Indianera.com for more stories on Corona and other news stories.
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