COVID-19: Mumbai to turn hostels, guest houses to quarantine facility

The Mumbai Suburban collector has directed city hostels, guest houses and hotel rooms to be converted into quarantine facility.

With Maharashtra recording, the highest number of novel coronavirus cases in the country, the Mumbai Suburban collector has passed an executive order to convert hostels, guest houses, and hotel rooms into quarantine facilities.

The collector has also requested various hospitality groups in the city to provide more hotel rooms which can be used as quarantine centers. The hostels which will be used for quarantine facility include RCF, BARC, MSEB, Hindustan Petroleum in BKC, IIT-Bombay and MTNL guest house in Hiranandani, Powai.

These quarantine facilities will be made available to all those who are coming from different international locations.

While commenting on this development, Milind N Borikar, Collector of Mumbai, said we need to quarantine people for at least 14 days who have travel history to any foreign location. In order to make it work, we need more accommodation facilities. We are going to accommodate only those people in these facilities who are under C-category and have very little chance to infect others.

However, this move has been strongly condemned by the 15,000 plus residents who are currently living on the IIT-B Powai campus.

Responding to this development, Subhasis Chaudhuri, Director, IIT-Bombay said that we do understand the difficult time the state and country are facing overall due to coronavirus outbreak. However, with this move, the government is putting over 15,000 students, faculties, staff, and their families living on campus life at risk.

He also said that they had also requested the government not to take this action. However, despite their objection and request, the order was passed.

Since the outbreak of coronavirus in the country, Maharashtra has been at the top for reporting the highest number of positive cases. So far, India has reported 223 positive cases with five deaths.

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