Indian Railways To Modify 20,000 Rail Coaches Into Isolation Wards To Accommodate Up To 3.2 Lakh Covid-19 Patients

After announcing its plans to convert as many as 20,000 coaches into full-fledged isolation wards, the Indian Railways on Tuesday (31 March) shared that these coaches would be able to accommodate as many as 3.2 lakh possible beds for Covid-19 patients, reports Economic Times.

Setting individual targets for its 16 zones, the Indian Railways has already begun the work on converting the first 5,000 coaches into isolation wards. As many as 486 of these coaches will be converted by Secunderabad headquartered South Central Railways, followed by Mumbai headquartered Central Railways which will convert another 482 coaches.

Once completed, these 5,000 coaches would be able to accommodate as many as 80,000 beds, greatly augmenting the capacity of the nation to isolate, quarantine and treat the people who would have contracted the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19).

It should be noted that as of now the Indian Railways is only taking up non-AC sleeper coaches for the conversion project. Each of these converted isolation coaches would be able to accommodate 16 beds.