Indian Railway has suspended all train services from Monday at Delhi’s important Anand Vihar railway station. The decision comes following a decision by the Centre to provide Delhi government with 500 railway coaches, turned into isolation wards, to augment the shortage of beds in view of the rising number of coronavirus cases in the city. All the platforms will be reserved for the deployment of isolation coaches for Covid-19 patients, a Railways official said on Sunday.
All five trains running from Anand Vihar station will now operate from Old Delhi Railway Station and two trains with special Covid-19 coaches have already arrived at the railway station.
Earlier in the day, Union Home Minister Amit Shah had said that the Central government would provide 500 railway coaches to Delhi to overcome the shortage of hospital beds for coronavirus patients.
“These railway coaches will not only add another 8,000 beds in Delhi but this coach will be equipped with all facilities to fight the corona infection,” Shah said after meeting Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia and Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal.
The Railways has already deployed 54 such coaches in the maintenance depot of the Shakurbasti station and is planning to deploy the remaining coaches on the seven platforms of Anand Vihar station, sources told PTI.
Three trains from Anand Vihar station were to Motihari, Raxaul and Muzaffarpur in Bihar and two trains were to Ghazipur city in Uttar Pradesh.
The Centre has also asked the Delhi administration to begin conducting Covid-19 testing at every polling station in Delhi’s containment zones. “Testing will be doubled in the next couple of days in Delhi and tripled within the next six days,” the Home Minister said.
The Centre has fully assured the Delhi government to make available necessary resources like oxygen cylinders, ventilators, pulse oximeters and all other requirements to fight this epidemic, he added.
To deal with the crisis, the Delhi government declared Hindu Rao Hospital, run by the North Delhi Municipal Corporation, a dedicated Covid-19 facility today. Hindu Rao is the largest civic hospital in the national capital.
Delhi recorded 2,224 fresh coronavirus cases on Sunday in the highest single-day spike in the national capital, taking the infection tally to over 41,000, and the death toll mounted to 1,327.
This is the third successive day when over 2,000 cases were reported in a day in Delhi. The previous highest spike in cases — 2,137 — was recorded on June 12.
The number of coronavirus cases in Delhi is the third highest in the country after Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.
Fifty-six fatalities have been recorded in the last 24 hours, the Delhi health department said Sunday.
