Coronavirus: Two five-star hotels in Mumbai cleared to admit non-critical patients
Amid a stress on the city’s health infrastructure, the private Jaslok Hospital has been designated as a Covid facility.
Mumbai’s civic body on Thursday said that it has approved two five-star hotels in the city to be used by private hospitals to admit coronavirus patients who are not in critical condition, the Hindustan Times reported. Twenty-two beds at the InterContinental Hotel on Marine Drive and 20 beds at the Trident Hotel in Bandra Kurla Complex will be made available, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation said.
Non-critical patients from Bombay Hospital in south Mumbai can be shifted to the Marine Drive facility, while those from the HN Reliance Foundation Hospital can avail of the Bandra Kurla Complex hospital.
The decision to designate the two hotels came after the civic body said that private hospitals will tie up with four-star or five-star hotels, NDTV reported. These facilities will accommodate patients who can be transferred from hospitals after doctors give approval.
“It is seen that many beds in private hospitals are occupied by patients who do not require emergency medical intervention, such patients can be effectively and adequately managed at isolation facilities such as step-down facilities,” a notice from the public health department stated.
Hospitals can charge up to Rs 4,000 for a room at these facilities and Rs 6,000 if anyone is staying with the patient, according to NDTV.
Meanwhile, the private Jaslok Hospital in Mumbai has now been converted into a dedicated Covid-19 hospital, ANI reported, quoting the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai. The hospital will no longer admit patients suffering from other ailments.
The BMC commissioner added that an additional 250 Covid-19 beds at Jaslok Hospital, including 40 Intensive Care Unit ones, would be available on the civic body’s online dashboard by Saturday morning. Thirty more ICU beds will be added in the SevenHills Hospital on Thursday and 1,500 more regular beds will be available at the NESCO Jumbo Centre in a week.
The decision came as health infrastructure in the financial capital of the country continued to be under stress due to high number of coronavirus cases. On Wednesday, Mumbai reported 9,925 new cases of the virus and 54 more people died of it.