The Central Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Thursday has issued additional guidelines for quarantine of returnees from abroad / contacts / isolation of suspect or confirmed cases in private facilities.
It is mentioned that there are large number of facilities such as hotels, service apartments, lodges which remain unoccupied due to impact of COVID-19 on travel and tourism and there are also instances where people who don’t have requisite space at home may opt for such facilities which is likely to reduce the pressure on the family, give comfort to the person, and protect the family members and immediate neighbourhood.
Health Ministry said that standard operating procedures are applicable both for facility quarantine/ facility isolation in hotels, service apartments, lodges etc. unless and otherwise stated categorically. The State/UT government opting for this model will ensure that the quarantine and isolation facility will not co-exist and the facility owner will have a choice to dedicate the facility for either of the two. Also, these facilities will offer single room on paid basis to contacts/cases with attached washrooms. The tariff for the accommodation and services shall be fixed by the facility in consultation with the state government and widely publicized and the facility dedicated for isolation will follow the norms established for COVID Care Centre.
The Ministry also highlighted that the facility owner of the quarantine/isolation facility will make such additional arrangements as under:
- They shall ensure in-house availability of a trained doctor and a nurse on 24X7 basis.
- The doctor will monitor the contacts/cases in quarantine/isolation facilities once a day on basic parameters of temperature, pulse, blood pressure, respiratory rate and pulse oxymetry and keep record of the same.
- The doctor engaged by the facility will inform the District Surveillance Officer regarding the list of cases/contacts admitted to such facility and their health status.
- The facility should network with an approved laboratory for testing samples as per ICMR guidelines.
- The quarantined/isolated persons should not be allowed to meet visitors. They can talk on phone.
- The facility will provide Wi-Fi facility and ensure that the client downloads the Aarogya Setu App on mobile and it should remain active at all times (through Bluetooth and location service).
- The facility should train its staff to call 108 free Ambulance service or any other Ambulance as per requirement.
It further said that the facility owner will give an undertaking to follow the above SOP and to have adequate manpower including the above mentioned health workers as per the prescribed protocol and also facility should ensure that the clear instructions for the contacts/cases are provided at the time of check-in as per MoHFW guidelines, whereas the discharge of the contacts/cases from the facility will be in accordance with the discharge policy.