Bengaluru private hospitals wind up Covid care centres at star hotels

Bengaluru had faced a severe shortage of beds at both private and government hospitals for Covid patients

In less than one-and-a-half months since the launch of Covid Care Centres at hotels in various parts of the city, several private hospitals have shut down these CCCs.

With a sudden spurt in cases since March and active cases breaching the four-lakh mark in May, Bengaluru faced a severe shortage of beds at both private and government hospitals for Covid patients.

Resolving the burgeoning crises, the state government had directed major private hospitals to convert hotels into hospitals to treat mild and moderately symptomatic Covid patients.

Reeling under severe losses due to the Covid-induced lockdown and restrictions, the hotel industry saw it as a chance to mop up revenue.

As a result, hospitals such as Manipal, Suguna, People Tree, Apollo, Columbia Asia, Mallige and several others identified about 32 hotels and set up 1,281 beds.

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These Covid Care Centres came in handy to treat those who had no isolation facilities at homes and for returnees from adjoining states.

But with the caseload plummeting considerably in the recent weeks, hospitals said they have enough beds to treat patients, thus prompting the private hospitals to wind up their operations in these hotels.

Acknowledging the closure of CCCs at some of the hotels, P C Rao, president, Bruhat Bengaluru Hotels Association, said: “A few star hotels were identified to collaborate with some of the private hospitals to treat Covid patients.

'We did our bit to help'

"Even though it did not generate much revenue, we decided to help the government in our own way by converting these hotels into small hospitals. But now, more number of beds at hospitals are lying vacant and so they have decided to close the CCCs at the hotels,” Rao said.

All the hotels have been completely sanitised and the employees who had gone to their hometowns have been asked to return and resume work.