HC okays plan to turn two 5-Star Hotels into COVID-19 Care units

On Monday, the High Court of Delhi cleared the decks for the use of 2 city hotels as extended Covid-19 facilities, based on recommendations of an expert panel which also said such hotels must be attached to hospitals.

After visiting the 5-star hotels, a Court-appointed panel of AIIMS director Randeep Guleria and Niti Aayog member V K Paul told High Court, "It is advisable & infrastructurally feasible to use Hotel Suryaa, New Friends Colony, & Hotel Crowne Plaza in Okhla as (such) facilities."

But since both hotels were not been designed as hospitals, they were ideally suited for use as COVID care centres to treat asymptomatic patients who have no home-quarantine facilities, mild cases & people suspected to have contracted Covid-19, the panel said. Justice Navin Chawla asked the hotel authorities to start the process of converting their facilities into care centres.

Keep only ‘mild’ cases at hotels: HC

The High Court of Delhi allowed the hotels to raise related issues of room compensation & safety of staffers by sending a representation to the Govt.

The report filed in the HC stated that “The patients admitted there should be asymptomatic (with no facility of home quarantine) and/ or mild cases or suspects with a respiratory rate less than 15 & room air oxygen saturation more than 94%. The triage & initial evaluation for all such patients should be done at the attached hospital & the responsibility of clinical care of all patients in the hotels shall rest with the hospital".

A telephonic assessment of all admitted patient’s general status should be done at least once in every twelve hours & physically once daily,” the expert panel report said.

It added that the attached hospital must install an adequate number of “resuscitation bays at suitable locations in the hotel to cater to immediate requirements of admitted patients who may require emergency medical assistance & need stabilisation before transfer to the attached hospital.”

Common medical equipment like blood pressure monitors, glucometer, oxygen saturation monitors & thermometers should be made available in adequate numbers at the hotel to regularly monitor basic parameters of all patients on need basis. It said the hospital must deploy an equipped ambulance at the hotel on a 24x7 basis to immediately transfer any patients in whom symptoms progress from mild to moderate/severe. Similarly, doctors & nursing staff must be physically deployed at the hotels.

The panel also pointed out that Hotel Suryaa has three huge banquet halls, which can easily accommodate approximately 50-60 patient beds & a central lobby that can act as a central nursing station. Similarly, Hotel Crowne Plaza has one banquet hall, which could accommodate approximately 25 patient beds.

It added that “These banquet halls can be appropriately equipped & converted into dedicated Covid-19 health centres if the need arises on account of acute shortage of hospital beds in the NCT of Delhi".

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