India has begun to bring as many as 1.5 million citizens home all of whom will be kept under institutional quarantine for a minimum of 14 days.
For this, the Union Health Ministry has issued additional guidelines according to which citizens returning from abroad can now stay in hotels, lodges and service apartments in case they don’t have enough space in their own homes to maintain isolation.
People availing this facility will be offered a single room with an attached bathroom on a paid basis. On the other hand, clinically assessed cases with very mild symptoms will be kept in an isolation facility that will keep suspected and confirmed cases separately.
However, the quarantine and isolation facility will not co-exist.
The owner of the facility will have to make arrangements for an in-house doctor and a nurse on 24X7 basis.
The guidelines also instruct for the linens, towels, etc. to be thoroughly disinfected. The patients must not be allowed to meet any visitors and must be provided Wi-Fi facility in order to stay connected to the Aarogya Setu app.
The discharge conditions of patients from such facilities will be the same as those for coronavirus patients discharged from the hospital.
