India suspends rail services that ferry 20mn to halt virus

Bloomberg

India cancelled passenger trains and various states asked non-essential services to shut, as the world’s second-most populous country heads toward a complete lockdown to prevent the coronavirus from spreading locally.
All except a bare minimum rail services will stop operating through March 31, the Ministry of Railways said in a statement on Sunday, hours into a self-imposed curfew called by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Thousands of poor migrants had thronged key train stations through the weekend, anxious to head to their native villages as the partial shutdown threatens to rob them of weeks of pay.
The risk is that these scores may unwittingly be spreading the coronavirus from Indian cities — where cases had been concentrated until now — to the nation’s vast hinterland. India has the world’s fourth-longest rail network, carrying on average more than 20 million passengers a day, or roughly the size of Australia’s population.
“We have to curb train travel,” Shivaji Daund, a divisional commissioner with Maharashtra state government, of which Mumbai is the capital, said in a statement. “It’s absolutely necessary to stop trains to halt the spread of coronavirus.”
At least 14 train travellers have tested positive over the past week, including two who were ordered to self-quarantine, the Ministry of Railways tweeted on March 21. Streets across India’s cities were deserted as citizens stayed indoors heeding Modi’s call for a 14-hour voluntary curfew on Sunday. The appeal is part of the administration’s effort to curb the spread of the virus across the the nation.
While India has reported 324 confirmed cases of the virus, authorities say these are imported by travellers from abroad rather than instances of community transmission. Still, infectious diseases experts have warned India is set to face an “avalanche” of cases in the coming weeks.
While growth in total numbers has been slow until now, “the number will be 10 times higher” by April 15, said Dr. T Jacob John, the former head of the Indian Council for Medical Research’s Centre for
Advanced Research in Virology, a government-funded
institution.
The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on on March 20 expanded the criteria of people who can be tested to include all patients with pneumonia symptoms or severe respiratory illnesses. Earlier, the bulk of India’s testing was aimed at individuals who have traveled internationally.
On March 21, the Indian Council for Medical Research issued guidelines for private labs to test for Covid-19. The ICMR also set a price cap of 4,500 rupees ($60) for the test.
The government of the state of Maharashtra, which houses India’s financial hub Mumbai, asked all non-essential businesses to shut down through March 31. Mumbai has more than 8 million migrants from other areas of the country, according to the 2011 census, with a large share employed in the informal economy that denies its workers job security or medical benefits. In New Delhi, metro services were expected remain shut on Sunday following Modi’s call Indians to stay indoors from 7 am to 9 pm local time.
Indian railways have closed most tourist attractions, including the rail museum, cut most discounts, relaxed refund rules, and reduced meal services at stations to prevent overcrowding. It will operate only a bare minimum number of local trains in the main cities on Sunday, apart from cancelling most long-haul trains for the the day, when the nation is set to observe a self imposed curfew.
Shares of Indian Railway Catering & Tourism Corp, which holds a monopoly over ticketing, have lost 43% of their value over the past month. Average ticket sales have reduced to 550,000 a day from 850,000 earlier, Mahendra Pratap Mall, IRCTC chairman told BloombergQuint.