With the Centre arranging special flights to bring back the Indians stranded abroad, the State machinery has undertaken the Herculean task of finding suitable places that can be converted into quarantine centres for isolating the close to 20,000-odd ‘lockdown’ returnees.
Since the number is very high and the government alone cannot set up free quarantine centres for all, it will offer ‘paid’ quarantine as an option. The move is also an attempt to address complaints about bad hygienic conditions at a few quarantine centres.
The district administration has asked some of the local hoteliers here to prepare their hotel rooms as quarantine facilities to accommodate people expected to return in the coming days.
Tariff chart
The hotels are put in three categories of normal, medium and luxury with a tariff of ₹2,000, ₹2,500 and ₹3,500 respectively per day per person, inclusive of breakfast, lunch and dinner. The first round of discussions saw seven hoteliers offering services in the first category-hotel M5, Manorama, Swarna Palace, Indra Prastha, Alankar Inn, Growwin and Oyo Rooms.
In the second category, hotel Metropolitan, Red Fox and Kiran’s Pride have come forward and among luxury hotels, Taj Gateway, Fortunue Murali and D.V. Manor will lend their rooms for the ‘quarantine guests’.
Not all hotels have the infrastructure to contribute their mite as many of them had been shut down immediately after the lockdown was announced with the staff and workers heading for their homes. The star hotels and a few others have been running their properties with minimum staff for maintenance of the place.
Testing mandatory
From the Gannavaram airport, people will be brought to the COVID-19 Control Centre and those testing positive will be shifted to a hospital in an ambulance while others will head to the ‘government’ and ‘private’ quarantine centres for mandatory isolation of 14 days.
“A small part of our hotel will turn into a quarantine centre with a doctor, a nurse and a police person monitoring the situation round the clock. The area will be sanitised and everybody in the vicinity will avoid direct contact with the ‘returnees’,” said the General Manager of a star hotel who was part of the Sunday’s meeting.
Three uniform sets of menus have been designed for the three categories and the ‘guests’ will not be allowed to move around as part of the social distancing norms, he said.
State nodal officer Srikanth Arja said the first flight from the U.S. will land in Hyderabad on Monday. People coming to A.P. will be quarantined in Vijayawada city, he added.
