London Euston, Birmingham New Street, Liverpool Lime Street and Manchester Piccadilly railway stations all underwent two rounds of testing this year
Tests in January and June of this year at four of the major railway stations within England, as well as on intercity train services had revealed no traces of COVID-19, National Rail has now said.
Swabs had been taken on the areas of the train station areas that are most commonly touched by train passengers, including escalator handles, ticket machines and on benches, along with hour-long air samples in order to detect the coronavirus.
London Euston, Birmingham New Street, Liverpool Lime Street and Manchester Piccadilly stations all underwent two rounds of testing in both January and June, with tests repeated on the trains that run between stations in England.
This comes after a record number of 689,313 alerts were sent out to users of the official NHS COVID-19 app in both England and Wales in a week, NHS figures have shown.
Experts at Imperial College London have examined the results and found no COVID-19 contamination of any surface, or any airborne particles of the coronavirus.
Senior programme manager for Network Rail‘s response to the pandemic, Rob Mole, said: “Station cleaning teams and train staff have made it their mission to keep passengers safe during the pandemic and this is proof their dedicated approach works.
“We want all passengers to travel in confidence on the railway network and we will keep doing our part by rigorously cleaning trains and stations.
“We ask passengers to do their bit too by wearing face coverings while travelling out of respect for others so we can all stop the spread of COVID-19.”
People within England have not been legally required to wear face masks in settings such as public transport since the government lifted all coronavirus restrictions on the 19th of July.
However, a YouGov poll from last month showed that the majority of the British public (71%) want the mandatory wearing of face coverings to remain on public transport, and they are still being required on some services, including within London.
The poll also found 66% of people want face masks to continue to be mandatory in shops and some enclosed public places, against 27% who thought they should be scrapped.
This comes after The government has already announced that those who have received two doses of the vaccine will no longer be required to self-isolate after they have come in contact with someone who tests positive for the coronavirus from the 16th of August.
David Green, senior research fellow at Imperial College London, said: “In the same way that a swab is used to take a COVID-19 test in the nose and throat and sent to the lab, we use a filter to collect any virus particles in the air and swabs to collect viruses on surfaces.
“This approach provides a way of quantifying the amount of virus circulating in these public environments and the effect of mitigation strategies like cleaning and wearing face coverings.
“This is part of a wider programme of work with the public transport sector to understand where this virus is most prevalent so that we can return to pre-pandemic activities as safely as possible.”
