Stepping up its fight against COVID-19, Indian Railways has decided to deploy more than 2,500 doctors and 35,000 paramedical staff across the country. The railways has 586 health units, 45 sub-divisional hospitals, 56 divisional hospitals, 8 production units hospitals and 16 zonal hospitals across the country.
"Most of these facilities will now be dedicated to combat the coronavirus. It has also been decided that all health services of Indian Railways will be available to all Central government employees across the country now," a senior Indian Railways official said.
The Indian Railways has 2,546 doctors and 35,153 paramedical staff, including nurses, pharmacists among others, at its disposal.
While more doctors and paramedics are being recruited on a temporary basis by various zones, more than 5,000 beds in 17 dedicated hospitals and 33 hospital blocks in railway hospitals have been earmarked for treatment of COVID-19 patients.
According to railways officials, Indian Railways is converting 5000 train coaches across the country to serve as quarantine or isolation facilities, with 80,000 beds. "Work is going on a war-footing. Till date, more than 3,250 coaches have already been modified for the purpose," an official said.
Besides, 11,000 quarantine beds have been made available across the Indian Railways establishments for COVID-19 patients.
As availability of sufficient number of Personal Protective Equipment and ventilators would be critical in the fight against COVID-19, Indian Railways has started in-house production of PPE and is striving to produce around 1,000 PPEs per day, which may be upscaled further.
Meanwhile, to further boost the supply chain across the country, Indian Railways has introduced unhindered services of time-tabled parcel trains for nationwide transportation of essential commodities. Approximately, 58 routes (109 trains) for parcel special trains have been notified since the beginning of the lockdown period.
