Indian Railways has issued a travel advisory, asking people to postpone their journeys or cancel if possible in the wake of Coronavirus outbreak. There have been more than a dozen cases wherein people have been found breaking their self-quarantine phase. The advisory will come into effect immediately.
According to the advisory issued by the Railway Ministry, “Railways has found some cases of Coronavirus infected passengers in trains which makes train travel risky. Please avoid train travel as you may also get infected if your co-passenger has Coronavirus. Please postpone all journeys and keep yourself and your loved ones safe”.
Not only this, but there have also been reports of a few people who are not taking the quarantine phase seriously, and thus, the Railways has started contact tracing of passengers across all zones. One of the first cases was of eight passengers, who were tested positive and were supposed to be in self-isolation. Then, there was another case, wherein a person was found on travelling in AP Sampark Kranti Express from Delhi to Ramagundam (Telangana). These were all tested positive for the virus.
Again, on March 16, four more passengers were caught travelling in Godan Express from Mumbai to Jabalpur. Later, these men also tested positive.
A senior railway official said that they have now started contact tracing of all passengers. The four passengers (who tested positive for the virus) had travelled to India from Dubai last week and they were found in coach B1. Now, railways is now tracing all the passengers who travelled in the coach and might have been in contact with the infected people.
The railways is tracing its fellow passengers through registered details for their tickets and then taking the help of local state authorities. As an immediate step, railways has also stopped the said train and sanitised the whole coach for safety purposes.
The official also added that the coaches are also isolated following the process of sanitation and, as of now, Indian Railways has cancelled more than 200 passenger trains.
if ( window.TimesGDPR && TimesGDPR.common.consentModule.gdprCallback) { TimesGDPR.common.consentModule.gdprCallback(function(data){ if(!data.isEUuser){
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s){if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n; n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script','//connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js');
fbq('init', '1047366448616807'); fbq('track', "PageView");
} }) }