India's Overcrowded Buses and Trains are Being Cleaned to Keep Away Coronavirus

New Delhi: Be it the Mumbai locals or Delhi’s metro, the two crucial modes of public transport in India’s one of the two busiest cities could become a catalyst in the Coronavirus pandemic. To avoid further deterioration in the situation, the government has now taken up the cleaning of the two services which cater to a huge chunk of the population.

As health experts have been stressing on social distancing and even isolation, India’s overcrowded public transport with minimal hygiene standards throws a challenge to combat the crisis. To keep the situation from going downhill, railway staff in Mumbai has been trained to identify the patients with Coronavirus infection symptoms, apart from the regular cleaning of the trains.

In Delhi, the metro rail authorities have deployed the staff to clean the stations at regular intervals apart from making announcements of ‘do’s and don’ts’ in wake of the virus outbreak. The buses in Delhi are being cleaned regularly after the government launched the disinfection drive on March 11.

On Sunday, Union railway minister Piyush Goyal tweeted a video of the trains being sanitised to maintain hygiene amid the virus outbreak. "Combating #Coronavirus: Watch the proactive efforts taken by Railways to sanitise things prone to passenger touch in trains, making the journey more safe & hygienic for all passengers (sic)," Goyal wrote. In another tweet, Goyal said that the Railways has started educating and alerting passengers inside trains in Thiruvananthapuram division along with screening them to effectively curb the spread of Coronavirus.