NEW DELHI, Feb 11: Cooked Meal services in the trains will be resumed from Monday. The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Limited (IRCTC) is all set to fully resume the services of cooked meals in trains, which was suspended in March, 2020, as a precautionary measure following the Covid pandemic outbreak.
The IRCTC in a statement on Friday pointed out that partly services were restored in 428 trains already. “Of the total number of trains, cooked food had already been restored in 30% by Dec 21′, 80% by Jan 22′ and the remaining 20% shall be restored by February 14, 2022. Cooked food on premium trains (Rajdhani, Shatabdi, Duronto) had already been restored in December 21. Ready to eat meals would also continue,” it added.
The cooking services are being completely restored amid a decline in Covid-19 cases across the country, the IRCTC further said in the release. Earlier, the Ministry of Civil Aviation had allowed all airlines to serve cooked meals on domestic flights.
India’s Covid-19 pandemic situation has improved significantly as the daily count has gone down to 60,000 as against over 3 lakh cases being reported on a daily basis in mid-January when there was a massive resurgence, driven by the Omicron variant.
On Friday, India reported 58,077 new cases of coronavirus disease, taking the country’s total tally of Covid-19 infections to 42,536,137. The active cases stood at 6,97,802, according to the Union health ministry data. With 657 fresh Covid-19-related fatalities, the death toll climbed to 50,71,77.
(Manas Dasgupta)
