Health Ministry issues guidelines for quarantine at private hotels, service apartments, lodges

Union Health Ministry has issued additional guidelines for quarantine of returnees from abroad, contacts and isolation of suspect or confirmed cases in private facilities like hotels, service apartments and lodges. 

The guidelines came as there are large number of facilities such as hotels, service apartments and lodges which remain unoccupied due to impact of COVID-19 on travel and tourism and people who don’t have requisite space at home may opt for such facilities. This is likely to reduce the pressure on the family, give comfort to the person, and protect the family members and immediate neighborhood.

As per the guidelines, 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. These facilities will offer single room on paid basis with attached washrooms and the tariff for the accommodation and services will be fixed by the facility in  consultation with the state government. 

The guidelines say that the cases



will only be kept in an isolation facility, if the cases are clinically assessed  to be pre-symptomatic or very mild. Such facility that opts for isolation will have separate earmarked areas for keeping suspect cases and confirmed cases and will ensure no inter-mingling of these two categories.

The facility owner of the quarantine and isolation facility will   ensure in-house availability of a trained doctor and a nurse on 24X7 basis and the doctor will monitor the contacts and cases once a day. The doctor engaged by the facility will inform the District Surveillance Officer regarding the list of cases and 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 and isolated persons should not be allowed to meet visitors. However, they  can talk on phone. Besides, they will be provided Wi-Fi facility and ensure that the client downloads the Aarogya Setu App on mobile.