Covid-19: New York City readies hotel rooms as quarantine locations

The New York City in the US is planning to use empty hotel rooms as quarantine locations, as the country grapples to contain the spread of Covid-19 disease.

The plan involves using around 11,000 rooms to isolate people as well as accommodate front line workers, AP reported citing New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Notably, New York is among the worst affected regions in the US reporting more than 123,000 confirmed cases.

Particularly, the hotel rooms will serve as quarantine locations for people who stay in crowded apartments and homeless shelters. The rooms will also be used by health care workers.

Blasio was quoted by AP as saying: “If there is a threat that someone might get infected in the home and it might spread amongst the members of that family, we have to guard against that.”

He added that the local authority will work with community health centres to identify people who require the service and is expected to start moving them into the hotel rooms from the next week.

Earlier, the city planned to use hotels as hospitals to ease the pressure from overstretched health care system.

The New York Mayor further noted that the city is expected a take $7.4bn budget hit over the next 15 months due to the pandemic.

In the US, the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases has increased to 683,000.

Globally, the figure crossed 2.2 million, while the death toll crossed 150,000.