Budget hospitality chain Oyo has partnered with Apollo Hospitals Group to be a part of the latter’s ‘Project Stay I’ under which 5,000 quarantine rooms will be provided to COVID 19 patients across India.
‘Project Stay I’ is the isolation part of Apollo Hospitals’ comprehensive response plan named ‘Project Kavach’ to take the battle pandemic COVID-19 in India. Apollo has partnered with Oyo, Lemon Tree and Ginger Hotel chains to convert hotel rooms into sanitised isolation facilities with medical supervision for COVID 19 patients.
With the increasing number of people who have tested positive coronavirus, this move will ease some pressure on the overburned hospital beds transferring non-critical patients to these facilities.
Oyo will offer sanitised beds and quarantine rooms in its properties which are in physical proximity to Apollo Groups chain of hospitals in 6 cities namely Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bengaluru and Kolkata and will aide in isolation of non-critical and suspected cases near the hospital.
Apolo will launch the project with 500 beds with Oyo providing facilities in the cities Bengaluru and Hyderabad at first, Delhi will follow.
As per Apollo Hospitals Group’s joint managing director Sangeeta Reddy, 50-100 beds will be added every week and they will use IT solutions to streamline the process of booking, staying connected, allow patients to share their medical details in case they need further medical care.
While Oyo has not announced the price of these pay-per-use quarantine facilities, SBI, Deutsche Bank and HUL will be contributing monetary support to allow 50% of these rooms to be offered for free to those who cannot afford. Ginger and Lemon Tree Hotels will provide rooms for the price of Rs 2000 and Rs 3000 respectively, including food services offered by Zomato.
Before this partnership, Founder CEO Ritesh Aggarwal had spoken out to offer Oyo’s hotel properties as quarantine facilities to aid the government. The company is already offering free stays to doctors, nurses and other medical first responders in the United States where COVID 19 cases have gone past 140k.
