Mau (Uttar Pradesh), Jun 23 (IANS): The Uttar Pradesh government has started using the COVID-19 railway coaches, prepared by the Railways in the Mau district. So far 59 people, who tested corona positive, have been quarantined in these coaches while eight of them have even been discharged.

The isolation coaches are parked at the Mau railway station.

These non-air-conditioned coaches of the Indian Railways that have been modified into isolation wards to keep corona patients, now have 51 inmates.

The COVID isolation coaches are meant to be used when the health infrastructure of various states gets exhausted due to the sudden spike in Covid-19 cases across the country, the Railways had said earlier.

The Railways, have so far received a demand for coaches from Uttar Pradesh, Telangana and the Delhi government. The rest of the deployment will be done as and when states demand them, the Railways said.

Mau District Magistrate Gyan Prakash Tripathi said, "As many as 42 suspected Covid-19 positive cases on June 20, and 17 on Sunday were accommodated in these Covid-19 coaches at the Mau Junction."

He said that these 59 people are those who had remained in contact of the confirmed COVID-19 cases and have been quarantined.

The Railways have so far deployed a total of 960 COVID Care Coaches in five states -- Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.

The isolation coaches will be under the complete care of the Chief Medical Officer of the state government in the states where they will be deployed.

In Uttar Pradesh, as many as 372 such isolation coaches have been stationed at 23 locations -- Lucknow, Varanasi, Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay Junction, Agra, Bhadohi, Kanpur, Saharanpur, Faizabad, Mirzapur, Jhansi, Jhansi Workshop, Nakha Jungle, Subedarganj, Gonda, Bhatni, Nautanwa, Bahraich, Manduadih, Farrukhabad, Varanasi City, Mau, Bareilly City and Kasganj.

Tripathi said for the suspected cases, an institutional quarantine centre had been created at the BR Ambedkar Degree College.

"But, as the universities are giving tentative dates for examinations and the campus had to be sanitised by June 24, the district administration decided to utilise the isolation coaches of railway to quarantine suspected cases," he said.

These coaches can be used for very mild cases that can be clinically assigned to the Covid care centres as per guidelines issued by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.