Delhi government may delink hotels from hospitals

NEW DELHI: With the Covid-19 situation under control, Delhi government may delink the hotels attached to different hospitals. Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal is going to hold a meeting with the health department on Wednesday to discuss the delinking of the hotels. A decision is likely to be taken to delink the hotels from Covid hospitals, said sources.
Around 40 hotels, including some five-star hotels, were earlier linked to different hospitals. Over 4,600 additional Covid-19 beds were created.
Most of these beds, however, have remained unutilised because the capital reported far less number of Covid cases than expected. Till now, Delhi has reported only 1.32 lakh cases out of which only 10,887 are active cases and 1.17 lakh persons have recovered.
According to official information, all Covid hospitals in Delhi together have 15,408 beds out of which 12,633 are currently vacant. In dedicated Covid care centres, 4,709 out of 9,412 available beds are vacant. A total of 395 beds out of 554 are vacant in dedicated Covid health centres.
Even when Delhi reported nearly 4,000 new cases in one day, many beds in different government and private Covid hospitals were vacant. Now, the government believes that it can delink the hotels without causing any strain on the hospitals.
In the first week of July, officials had reported that most of the beds were unutilised in a few districts.