In Delhi, luxury hotels are improvising in COVID centers<

In the Suryaa, a luxury hotel in New Delhi, the staff prepares, downgrad, to swap their costumes and saris drawn for four pins for full combinations adapted to the new customers of the establishment: patients in the coronavirus.

Covid-19's epidemic is still raging in India, which to date has half a million official cases, and is progressing quickly.With more than 73.000 patients and 2.400 deaths declared, the capital New Delhi is now the most affected city of the southern Asian giant, ahead of Bombay.

Faced with the influx of patients, the city of 20 million inhabitants ordered the unprecedented requisition of hotels, reception rooms and train wagons to convert them into patient isolation centers, in order to relieve hospitals alreadyovercrowded.

For employees of the requisitioned places, it is a professional turn unexpected to say the least...

""""We have received hospital training on how to wear personal protective equipment and remove it.This is something that I would never have thought of having done during my career in the hotel industry, """"said Ritu Yadav, a manager of the Suryaa hotel, where the first patients will arrive shortly.

""""For doctors and nurses, it's part of their lives.For us, it is a totally new experience, and very trying.""""

More used to changing sheets and making service upstairs than taking care of patients in a pandemic, the Suryaa teams had to improvise to adapt to the new situation.

Two hundred beds in the rooms are preparing to accommodate asymptomatic patients or with only moderate symptoms of the new coronavirus.The hotel will not be able to charge them more than 60 euros per day, meal included.

Food will be brought to disposable cardboard plates.Red lines have been traced to implement physical distancing, and contacts between staff and patients will be limited to the strict necessary.

- Cardboard beds -

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The epidemic wave struck New Delhi with full whip.Local newspapers abound stories of patients who died after seeing multiple hospitals refuse them admission, for lack of available beds.

At the beginning of June, the government of the megalopolis announced to expect more than half a million cases of COVID-19 to the end of July for the capital alone, that is to say a multiplication by almost twenty in two months.

This outbreak would require, according to official estimates, 80.000 Hospital beds.Delhi has only 13.000 in normally, by adding those of the public and the private.

To develop their capacities of reception of patients, the authorities notably requisitioned around thirty hotels.Each establishment is attached to a referent hospital, which can dispatch caregivers in an emergency.

A huge religious center is also being converted into an isolation hall with a term capacity of 10.000 beds, for many made from boxes in boxes.

The requisition has outraged certain hotels, which are already facing heavy financial losses due to the two months of confinement in India and the numerous travel restrictions that persist.

x""""Ça a été un choc pour nous car personne ne nous en a parlé, nous avons découvert cela par la presse"""", raconte à l'AFP c.

Hotels owners, including those of Suryaa, have seized justice.They argue that many of their employees are over 50 years old and are therefore at risk, and that their staff has no training to provide care or manage bio-drug waste.

The court only partially reasoned to them: rather than serving as a campaign hospitals, the hotels will only be reception centers for the least serious patients.

""""C'est comme si vous vous endormiez dans un hôtel et le lendemain matin vous vous réveillez et on vous annonce que votre hôtel est devenu un hôpital"""", s'étonne Greesh Bindra. """"Nous sommes dans l'hôtellerie, pas dans la santé.""""