Hoteliers in Ranchi are reluctant to house Covid patients fearing major revenue loss in future due to the stigma associated with Novel Coronavirus and an exodus of panic-stricken hotel employees as a fallout of having to attend to infected patients, hotel owners said on Saturday.

The district administration had asked private hospitals to collaborate with hotels and use their infrastructure for housing asymptomatic Covid patients. However, almost a week since the decision was taken, none of the hotels here has agreed to collaborate with hospitals.

“We want to help, but we do not have trained manpower to deal with patients,” said Prakash Tekriwal, owner of Hotel Pearl Regency. “How can we serve hotel food to patients? And who will be held responsible in case of a casualty? We do not have any experience in attending to patients,” he added.

Another hotelier, who owns a chain of hotels in the state capital, said that the stigma associated with Covid-19 may trigger panic among future guests and eventually cause revenue loss to hotels that house Covid patients. “You know how people don't even enter colonies where Covid patients are found. Do you think any guest would want to stay in our hotel after we get the tag of a Covid hotel? No matter how much we sanitise the property, people will not want to stay in our hotel,” he said, requesting anonymity.

Besides, the fear of a spread of infection among hotel staff is also holding hotelier back from providing their rooms to patients. There is no clarity on whether the cost of the PPE kits used by hotel staff would be borne by the hospital or the hotel, said a hotelier. “We will become the easy target in case of a mishap. Hospitals will put the blame on us and get away with their mistakes,” said another Ranchi-based hotelier.

Ranchi Deputy Development Commissioner, Ananya Mittal said that Hotel Park Street had voluntarily housed Covid patients in their rooms and the doctors too had been arranged by the hotel administration.

“It is a private initiative, and the hospitals and hotels will have to mutually decide how to go about it. We will intervene only if they charge exorbitant fees from patients or do not adhere to the ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research) guidelines,” Mittal said.

Only one banquet hall has so far provided space for Covid patients. Devkamal Hospital collaborated with Amantran Banquet near ITI bus stand and started a 45-bed facility for Covid patients on Thursday. “We could convince the banquet hall owners to provide space only on the condition that we would take all the responsibility of patients,” said Dr Anant Sinha, CEO of Devkamal Hospital.

President of the Association of Healthcare Providers Yogesh Gambhir said that no other hotel or banquet hall had agreed to provide their infrastructure for treating Covid patients in Ranchi as of now, but some hospital owners were in talks with hoteliers.

The need for roping in hotels for treating Covid patients arose after most of the Covid hospitals in Ranchi ran out of beds. There were as many as 950 active cases of Covid-19 in Ranchi by Saturday afternoon, and around 400 dedicated Covid beds in hospitals, officials said.

Ranchi deputy commissioner Chhavi Ranjan had on Monday chaired a meeting with representatives of private hospitals in the city and asked them to collaborate with hotels and banquet halls for treating those who test positive for the virus but were asymptomatic. He had said that hotels, with their ready infrastructure, will help keep asymptomatic patients while attached hospitals can provide medical assistance.