MBTA General Manager Steve Poftak said transportation officials will be instituting a disinfection protocol on Wednesday to clean subway and commuter rail stations to help prevent the spread of coronavirus.

“Today we’re going to put a protocol in place for each one of our stations,” he told reporters.

Poftak said the plan includes installing hand sanitizers in the MBTA’s facilities and a regular cleaning of hand rails, guard rails, fare machines and other “contact areas.”

Personnel will be disinfecting that equipment every four hours, and all MBTA vehicles every day, Poftak said.

But regular, complete disinfection of busses, subways and para-transit vehicles will have to wait until officials have enough cleaning materials, noting that there are some “supply-chain issues."

“Right now, we have enough equipment on hand to be doing that for the commuter rail,” he said. “We expect by the end of this week to be doing that across the entire system.”

Asked about how the disinfection protocol differs from the existing efforts, Poftak said he didn’t know how often personnel clean the transit system. However, he described the cleaning schedule as “rigorous.”

In New York, transportation officials plan to completely disinfect the New York City’s fleet of subway trains and buses every 72 hours amid coronavirus concerns. That cleaning regimen covers all 472 subway stations, 21 Staten Island Railway stations, 124 LIRR terminals and stations and 101 Metro-North stations.

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