Bhubaneswar: In a bid to free more hospital beds for critical COVID-19 patients, the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) is planning to rope in hotels in the city for turning them into facilities to treat patients with mild infection.
The BMC Commissioner, Sanjay Kumar Singh, proposed this first-of-its-kind plan of hospital-hotel tie up in Odisha at a virtual meeting on Saturday.
The owners of major hotels and representatives of the hospitality industry along with authorities of private hospitals attended the meeting.
As per the idea, isolation beds with oxygen facility can be created for treatment of mild COVID patients, who can be managed with normal oxygen mask or nasal canula.
Appreciating the idea, hoteliers urged the BMC to facilitate the tie up so that their rooms, beds, house-keeping, fooding and sanitation facilities can be leveraged with expert medical services of private hospitals.
The representatives of private hospitals also showed the proposed tie up.
The Commissioner said all the interested hotel owners can approach the private hospitals of their choice for the tie up and intimate the BMC of the arrangement
This will, however, be a paid facility. The patients will have to pay as per their choice of the properties selected as would be fixed by the tie-up agreement.
