New Delhi: The Delhi hotels engaged by the Arvind Kejriwal government to ramp up its healthcare infrastructure amid a Covid-19 surge have made multiple tweaks and changes to host patients.
From equipping the premises with precautionary aids such as wash basins and sanitisers, and hiring contractors to handle the laundry handled by patients, to stripping the rooms bare of luxury fixtures, the premier hotels are adopting many steps to serve their new role as Covid care centers.
The Delhi government reportedly plans to involve 40 hotels and nearly 80 banquet halls as auxiliary healthcare set-ups to cater to a predicted coronavirus explosion in the capital in the weeks ahead. Under the initiative, six hotels have already been tied up with different hospitals.
The first order, issued 30 May, tied up Hotel Crowne Plaza with Batra Hospital and Research Center, Hotel Surya with Indraprastha Apollo Hospital, Hotel Siddharth with Dr B.L. Kapoor Hospital, Hotel Jivitesh with Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, and Hotel Sheraton with Max Smart Super Speciality Hospital. Later, Taj Man Singh was also partnered with Sir Ganga Ram Hospital.
The order initially caught the hoteliers by surprise, and there were complaints that they hadn’t been consulted. A legal challenge was mounted as well by Crowne Plaza and Hotel Surya, but after the Delhi High Court ruled in the government’s favour, they agreed to open their doors to patients.
While Sheraton is already hosting patients, the others are yet to, interviews with the management and staff suggest.
ThePrint spoke to five of the six hotels for this report. While a comment from Hotel Surya remains awaited, Hotel Siddharth couldn’t be reached through calls.
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Lobby and lifts
According to the Delhi government order, the hotels will host mildly symptomatic and asymptomatic Covid-19 patients. The prices of the rooms have been fixed at Rs 5,000 for 5-star hotels and Rs 4,000 for 3-4 star hotels, with additional costs for services such as oxygen etc.
Siddharth Misra, the manager of Hotel Jivitesh on Pusa Road, said he was working in line with guidelines provided by staff at the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital.
“We are now assigning separate entry/exit points for Covid patients, doctors and a separate area for hotel staff. The entry area for Covid patients has been marked as a red zone and will be sealed. To do so, we are erecting wooden partitions separating that area,” he said.
Sources at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital said the hospital “is trying its best to aid the hotels partnering with us”.
“Hotel staff will be provided with PPE (personal protective equipment) kits from the hospital along with a week-long training on donning and doffing (taking off) of PPE, and other healthcare and hygiene steps,” a hospital staffer said.
The hospital, the sources added, will also be helping the hotels with fumigation and clean-up once a patient leaves.
A staffer at Sheraton Hotel, Saket, said no major change has been made on their premises. Only, one of the two elevators has been reserved for use by patients.
Crowne Plaza, Okhla, has made similar changes to the elevator areas. Additionally, the hotel has installed wash basins in the main porch along with hand and foot sanitisers.
Hotels Crowne Plaza and Jivitesh also said they would use UV sanitisation for room key cards, pens, identity cards and other small items.
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Rooms & facilities
Rooms at the hotels will be stripped of luxury items and only the most basic amenities provided, a bid to minimise surface contact.
“Rooms will not have bed runners, or ceramic and glass cutlery. Instead, paper cups and disposable food plates will be provided,” said Misra.
At Sheraton, every occupant will be given soap to clean their cutlery and reuse. Crowne Plaza, meanwhile, has covered all their carpets in the corridors and removed all loose collaterals from rooms.
The AC thermostat in most hotels has been fixed at 24 degrees Celsius or above, keeping the condition of the patients in mind.
While Sir Ganga Ram Hospital has assigned a nutritionist to decide the menu for patients staying at the attached hotels, other facilities are fixing their own.
Occupants will be given a bedsheet, pillow and a duvet. At Jivitesh, the sheets are being acquired from vendors who will also wash the linen for them in keeping with the guidelines issued by the Delhi government.
According to the guidelines, all linen used by patients is to be dipped in a sodium hypochlorite solution for a minimum of 20 minutes and then put in washers. The sheets are washed at very high temperatures, up to 70 degrees Celsius, and then left untouched for 72 hours. Sheraton and Crowne Plaza said they would be handling the process on their own.
Sheraton, which has a tie-up with Max Hospital in Saket, has five of its six floors occupied by 115 Covid patients and six doctors, said a staffer at the hotel. Every floor has two staffers who attend to the needs of the occupants and they have been assigned rooms on the floors where they serve, the staffer added.
Every room has a table placed outside where fixed meals are served in disposable plates.
Dr Gurpreet Singh, vice-president of Max Super Speciality Hospital, said in a statement to ThePrint, “Given it’s a make-shift hospital, it is essential to make necessary emergency (medicines, devices, crash carts) arrangements including resuscitation measures, if required. Ambulance is on stand-by to support patient transfer to the nearest hospital, as and when needed”.
On structural changes in the hotel, he said, “Adequate provisioning is made for contained movement between patient areas and other common areas for all non-medical support staff to ensure safety and limit exposure to the disease.”
Hospitals have also assured hotels that any and all waste from the occupants is to be treated as biomedical waste and shall be collected by the hospital itself, in accordance with the Delhi government’s orders.
At Taj Man Singh, meanwhile, operations are yet to start as the hotel claims it has been under renovation since August 2019. Furthermore, a staffer said they are awaiting instructions from the authorities for the next steps.
‘To save a life’
When the Delhi government first issued its order, hoteliers were reluctant.
In the petition they filed in the Delhi High Court on 29 May, hotels Surya and Crowne Plaza cited a host of reasons behind not wanting to serve as Covid care centres. They included lack of manpower and funds, disposal of biomedical waste, size of elevators.
However, a committee constituted by the court to look into the matter, comprising Prof. Randeep Guleria of AIIMS and Dr V.K. Paul of NITI Aayog, said it “is advisable as well as infrastructurally feasible to use Hotel Surya… and Hotel Crowne Plaza… as extended Covid facilities”.
The hotels have since come on board, but some concerns remain, funds being the primary one.
Speaking to ThePrint, Misra of Hotel Jivitesh said repeatedly that this was difficult for them. “We will have to bear the cost of many of these facilities being provided. Hotels have incurred huge losses owing to the lockdown, most of the hotels are complying with the orders only because it can save someone’s life,” he added.
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