Coronavirus: All passenger trains cancelled till March 31

Hyderabad: Indian Railways has cancelled all the passenger train services till 31 March in the wake of COVID-19 outbreak. This includes all Mail, Express and Intercity trains, said the railway officials. All suburban trains will be cancelled from 23 March.

The notice issued by Indian Railways read that, “All originating long-distance Mail/Express and Intercity trains (including premium trains) and all originating passenger trains shall remain cancelled till 2400 hrs of 31 March 2020.”

Meanwhile the suburban trains and Metro Railway trains in Kolkata shall be continued at a bare minimum level on 22 March.

The Coronavirus cases reached a total of 324 in India and six states, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan and Bihar have announced complete lock down till March 31.

Nation-wide metro services suspended till March 31 to break the Coronavirus chain

Hyderabad: With the Coronavirus outbreak growing with each passing hour, the death toll due to Coronavirus has now reached 7 as Gujarat's Surat registered it's first death. The number of people positive for Coronavirus in India have crossed 350.

In response to this, Prime Minister Narendra Modi called in for a nation-wide Janta curfew on March 22 in order to promote social distancing and breaking the chain of the virus spread.

In view of the need to contain the spread of COVID-19, the chief secretaries of all the states held a high-level meeting and agreed that there is an urgent need to extend the restrictions on the movement of non-essential passenger transport including inter-state transport buses till March 31, 2020.

Following detailed discussions, the state Governments were advised to issue appropriate orders to only allow essential services to operate in the 75 districts which have reported confirmed cases or casualities of COVID-19.

The decisions taken listed that all the metro rail services are suspended till March 31, 2020. State government to issue orders allowing only essential services to operate in about 75 districts which confirmed Covid-19 cases.